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A bit like valgol, only worse.

For those of you who remember the Pagan BBS Scene (now there was a small niche lemme tell ya, probably no more than 20,000 boards in all), I have still got a lot of the text files I had on my BBS (The Cauldron 1991-1995) when it was part of PODS (The Pagan/Occult Distribution System) and Fidonet, available on Omphalos.net in the Resources Section.

I really loved the BBS days, and although the Internet is more efficient at communications than BBSes were in their day, there is not the sense of community that there used to be with a BBS. Something was lost with the demise of the BBS as a medium. Oh, I know they still exist but the average internet user will never see one in their entire lives - they are a dying element of modern communications. I am still tempted to set up one again though - perhaps a telnet bbs this time, since dialup is not feasible.

Any other PODS users or Sysops out there?

For those of you who remember the Pagan BBS Scene (now there was a small niche lemme tell ya, probably no more than 20,000 boards in all), I have still got a lot of the text files I had on my BBS (The Cauldron 1991-1995) when it was part of PODS (The Pagan/Occult Distribution System) and Fidonet, available on Omphalos.net in the Resources Section.

I really loved the BBS days, and although the Internet is more efficient at communications than BBSes were in their day, there is not the sense of community that there used to be with a BBS. Something was lost with the demise of the BBS as a medium. Oh, I know they still exist but the average internet user will never see one in their entire lives - they are a dying element of modern communications. I am still tempted to set up one again though - perhaps a telnet bbs this time, since dialup is not feasible.

Any other PODS users or Sysops out there?

If you need to find more relevant documents on specific subjects, I recommend using topic-specific search engines. I maintain one for all subjects relating to Paganism and Wicca on my Omphalos website. True, the site submissions have to be manually approved and this can lead to backlogs of site submissions, but since I spider all of the websites I have included in the directory (totalling over 140,000 webpages so far) the relevancy of any search results is raised by the lack of clutter from unrelated websites.

Similarly, if you are searching for information on Space Exploration try Spaceref where I used to work. Again, the directory is manually generated, and the results are greatly improved overall.

Nothing guarantees improved relevancy (for general purposes nothing beats Google in this respect), but using specialty search sites helps immensely in many cases.

And its been around for a while as a concept. I used to work for SpaceRef who maintain an excellent niche search engine devoted to space exploration.

I maintain Omphalos which is a niche search engine devoted to the modern alternative religions (Paganism, Wicca, etc) and related subjects.

All it really requires is a reliable collection of websites focusing on a specific range of subjects and good search engine software to index their pages. The results are often much more relevant than those from the major search engines - although Google is generally an excellent choice IMHO.

Does Anyone remember when the internet was not commercially focused, when it was about making actual information available? It may just be me, but it struck me that the whole focus of ICANN seems to be not so much how to regulate the domainspace, but how to generate more cash out of it. I would be *so* happy to see the development of an entirely non-commercial internet where I could go to seek bona-fide information free of advertisements, commercial interests, etc.

I have developed and maintained my own website (Omphalos - The Directory & Search Engine for Paganism & Witchcraft) and expanded it to provide a wide variety of information on its subjects, and it has a growing audience (~40,000 page views per month). I have done so without any thought of making a profit from the site. My only purpose is to try to provide some useful information to others out there who might be interested in the topics covered by my website. There are many other websites out there which have the same purpose and their developers have put the same sort of time into their sites as I have into mine I am sure. We are all being lost in a sea of increasing commercialization on the web. I regularly see the assumption made that if you are on the web, and own your own domain you are naturally doing so for the purpose of making money and therefore can naturally afford the costs associated with any new requirements that spring up. When renewal time for Omphalos.net rolls around I can certainly afford the $75 required, but not if they were allowed to raise the rate to $2000. Can anyone see NSI claiming that since .biz domains go for $2000 they ought to be able to raise the rate on .com domains? I can. Therefore, I fear that it might not be all that long before the relentless drive to turn a quick buck might drive me out of my own domain space entirely.

And yes, I should probably register Omphalos.info as soon as I can, but what will it cost me?

The biggest problems with Search Engines, is relevancy. The problem being that when I do a search for a word like "magic" the search engine will return results based upon its algorithm, but trying to produce relevancy from a single search word is just about impossible as a task. With a term like "magic" I could be looking for:

• Magic as in Magic the Gathering - a collectible card game I used to play.
• Magic as in the occult.
• Magic as in sleight-of-hand.

Or any of a large number of subjects that I could have in mind at the time of my search. The results from a search engine such as Google, will rank pages which contain the word magic in the page title, multiple times in the body of the page, in the META tags, in or near HREF links, or which are linked to by many other sites higher than those which do not meat these criteria. It differs from search engine to search engine, depending on criteria.

None of these criteria for ranking take into account the nature of my query - what I had in mind when I did the search. In other words they do not directly address the relevancy of the results. If a search engine offered me the opportunity to pick from results it returned and gradually refine the search to produce better results it would be addressing this situation. Some do with a "search again in this result set" or "more like this" type option on their results pages, but its still kinda mechanical, and not all that reliable.

I think it will take some sort of AI analysis of search requests based on user-feedback of some sort and with a learning capability to surpass the current crop of search engines. Until such time as we have some smart systems working behind the scenes on searching any improvements will no doubt be incremental rather than radical.

Now, as for keeping the specifics of how a page is ranked secret I think its absolutely necessary. There is a constant, quiet, war going on between the search engines and the folks who want to get their websites listed at the top of the page when a result set is produced. The people who regularly submit their sites to the various search engines, with each search engine receiving a specially made page generated just for its benefit to ensure that the website gets the best ranking possible etc, are not interested in how accurate the search engine is, they simply want to come up first. The folks at the search engine generally want the most relevant pages to be returned. There is an essential difference of purpose between the two camps.

On the side of the search engines, they have control over their ranking system, and change it peridically to prevent abuse of the system. The folks who are seriously trying to get to the top of the heap in the search engine results are constantly trying new methods to get ahead.

For instance, at one point some webmasters were creating their webpages with a lot of text at the bottom of the page that was the same font color as the background, so that the search engines would spider the contents of the page but users would never see those contents. This let them list all sorts of words that scored higher in the search engines returns, but had little or no relevancy to the page contents. The search engines got wise to this trick and now most will penalize you for using it.

Opening up the search engines ranking rules would only make the system easier to abuse more precisely. No matter how many eyeballs pour over the code, it will still not change the nature of the guy who will use any method at his disposal to get his porn page returned as Link #1 when you do a search for MP3 because its the hottest term currently being searched for.

Google has altered this battle somewhat by ranking pages higher in their results based on how many other webpages contain links to that page (and also based upon the nature of the linking page. They use a distinction between pages which contain a lot of links - like a web directory such as my own Omphalos - and those which are linked to by a lot of other pages. Both get points for different reasons and in different instances. I don't remember the details), but even this is open to abuse, although with a bit more effort required. I know of a website which has over 200 different URLs registered and operational, all of which contain pages which point back to the main URL they are promoting. When a search engine such as Google goes to anaylize this website, it will rank it higher because it is linked to by so many separate domains and so many separate pages on those domains. Its harder to abuse, but it can be done.

Of course, this is all basically irrelevant, since each of the search engine companies keeps their methodology and their source code highly protected. It is worth millions of dollars in revenue, and I cannot honestly see any of them deciding to release their software in this way.

If you have not noticed, practically every graduate student who devises a new and effective method of indexing and ranking search results ends up creating their own company once they have delivered their thesis and entered the real world. That is certainly how Google started, and I believe is also how Ask Jeeves got going. I am sure that most of the other main search engines have gotten going in the same or similiar manners.

All that said, If you want to play with a true search engine that is GPLed and works quite well, although not on the scale of a Google or an Altavista, try UDMSearch. It runs just fine under Linux or FreeBSD (I have installed it on both in the past) and I am using it on my site under Solaris. It is still in an intense development cycle and new versions are released regularly, but its worth exploring if you are interested in how a search engine works, and want to get your hands dirty.

For more information on the big boys, check out Search Engine Watch, and finally, if you are simply interested in Space, Space Exploration or Space Science, check out SpaceRef.

Well its certainly true within my experience that a lot of modern Pagans are also technically inclined, but not my experience that a lot of techs are Pagans. I think the one is a subset of the other.

I have been interested in computers since I first played with the mainframe at the University of Victoria, and with my friends Trash80 and Apple II. I have been interested in Witchcraft and Paganism for an even longer period - over 25 years now. I am an initiated Alexandrian Wiccan (for those not familiar with Wicca, view it as a subset of Modern Paganism. Modern Paganism includes a variety of religious beliefs based on resurrecting Pre-Christian religous practices. Neither have anything to do with Satanism, Satan being part of the Judeo-Christian mythos).

I run a website devoted to Paganism (Omphalos if you are curious), currently work as a programmer on several websites, and spend much of my time learning about various technical subjects - mostly relating to programming, Linux, and FreeBSD. Within the Pagan community, I am fairly typical.

I think the thing that attracts many technical types to Paganism is that it is generally unstructured, non-authoritarian, and fairly do-it-yourself in nature. It also does not insist in any "One True Way(TM)". I can have a conversation with another Pagan, differing in our viewpoints entirely, and there is nothing in either philosophy which excludes acceptance of the other's religous practices in most cases. Paganism accepts that there is no one truth, so there is no one correct way.

I run a website called Omphalos - its pretty small, its taken a lot of work to develop, and I don't make a dime off of it, so I am not upset at lost revenue or anything, but I have had my site content ripped off completely by some other individual in the past, and despite repeated attempts to get the situation resolved (which I handled badly at the start I admit) and despite chasing the guy across multiple webhosts I have still failed to get my stolen content removed from his site. I even contacted the EFF on this, but they do not deal with issues of copyright.

My website has completely changed since this event, so to illustrate the point I have to point to an older copy of the site that can be compared to the stolen version (which has undergone some changes too for that matter). Keep in mind we are talking content here not appearance. What was specifically taken from my site are the website descriptions and categories that were present in my directory. Here are some example pages:

1. My old page Beginner and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Beginner's Page
2. My old page Covens, Circles, Groves & Groups and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Covens Page.
3. My old page Paganism & Spirituality and the corresponding page on Under a Magic Spell Magickal Books Paganism & Spirituality Page
4. There are many more pages to compare, but I leave that to the reader. My old main page is at: here and the main directory page of the offending website is here

Now, my site has grown considerably since then, and undergone many changes. In one sense I don't care that this individual has ripped off my pages because my site is progressing and is probably far better known, its also a more useful resource (and I think I can do webpages better than the other guy too). OTOH, I am really pissed off at the offense of having my site content stolen and being unable to do anything about it other than complain. I don't have the cash to take someone to court so that is not a feasible option, and I am tired of chasing this guy from one ISP to another (I have had his site removed from 3 servers so far and it just keeps reappearing elsewhere).

I found out about this because someone who had submitted their site to my website informed me that the same description had appeared on this other website, even though they did not submit their site description to that other site. Also, one of my websites ("Atho's Pagan Files Collection", now a part of Omphalos itself) is actually listed in the Bookstore's directory and *I* sure as hell didn't submit it there.

When I first discovered this I posted a complaint on my website accusing the other site of ripping me off, then contacted the webmaster. I should have done it the other way around, cause I got his back up and it became impossible to reason with him on this issue. My mistake freely admitted here. When I asked him about the similiarities between our site content, he had two comments:

1. Its just a coincidence that they are so similar.
2. I don't own a copyright on the contents of my site because it is not possible to have a copyright on webcontent.

So he refuses to listen to me, and the only recourse I have is to keep chasing him from server to server or sue him in court. I don't have the time or cash for either.

BTW if the subject matter of my site is of interest to you, please use the current version: http://www.omphalos.net

Any suggestions?

I run a website called Omphalos - its pretty small, its taken a lot of work to develop, and I don't make a dime off of it, so I am not upset at lost revenue or anything, but I have had my site content ripped off completely by some other individual in the past, and despite repeated attempts to get the situation resolved (which I handled badly at the start I admit) and despite chasing the guy across multiple webhosts I have still failed to get my stolen content removed from his site. I even contacted the EFF on this, but they do not deal with issues of copyright.

My website has completely changed since this event, so to illustrate the point I have to point to an older copy of the site that can be compared to the stolen version (which has undergone some changes too for that matter). Keep in mind we are talking content here not appearance. What was specifically taken from my site are the website descriptions and categories that were present in my directory. Here are some example pages:

1. My old page Beginner and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Beginner's Page
2. My old page Covens, Circles, Groves & Groups and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Covens Page.
3. My old page Paganism & Spirituality and the corresponding page on Under a Magic Spell Magickal Books Paganism & Spirituality Page
4. There are many more pages to compare, but I leave that to the reader. My old main page is at: here and the main directory page of the offending website is here

Now, my site has grown considerably since then, and undergone many changes. In one sense I don't care that this individual has ripped off my pages because my site is progressing and is probably far better known, its also a more useful resource (and I think I can do webpages better than the other guy too). OTOH, I am really pissed off at the offense of having my site content stolen and being unable to do anything about it other than complain. I don't have the cash to take someone to court so that is not a feasible option, and I am tired of chasing this guy from one ISP to another (I have had his site removed from 3 servers so far and it just keeps reappearing elsewhere).

I found out about this because someone who had submitted their site to my website informed me that the same description had appeared on this other website, even though they did not submit their site description to that other site. Also, one of my websites ("Atho's Pagan Files Collection", now a part of Omphalos itself) is actually listed in the Bookstore's directory and *I* sure as hell didn't submit it there.

When I first discovered this I posted a complaint on my website accusing the other site of ripping me off, then contacted the webmaster. I should have done it the other way around, cause I got his back up and it became impossible to reason with him on this issue. My mistake freely admitted here. When I asked him about the similiarities between our site content, he had two comments:

1. Its just a coincidence that they are so similar.
2. I don't own a copyright on the contents of my site because it is not possible to have a copyright on webcontent.

So he refuses to listen to me, and the only recourse I have is to keep chasing him from server to server or sue him in court. I don't have the time or cash for either.

BTW if the subject matter of my site is of interest to you, please use the current version: http://www.omphalos.net

Any suggestions?

I run a website called Omphalos - its pretty small, its taken a lot of work to develop, and I don't make a dime off of it, so I am not upset at lost revenue or anything, but I have had my site content ripped off completely by some other individual in the past, and despite repeated attempts to get the situation resolved (which I handled badly at the start I admit) and despite chasing the guy across multiple webhosts I have still failed to get my stolen content removed from his site. I even contacted the EFF on this, but they do not deal with issues of copyright.

My website has completely changed since this event, so to illustrate the point I have to point to an older copy of the site that can be compared to the stolen version (which has undergone some changes too for that matter). Keep in mind we are talking content here not appearance. What was specifically taken from my site are the website descriptions and categories that were present in my directory. Here are some example pages:

1. My old page Beginner and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Beginner's Page
2. My old page Covens, Circles, Groves & Groups and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Covens Page.
3. My old page Paganism & Spirituality and the corresponding page on Under a Magic Spell Magickal Books Paganism & Spirituality Page
4. There are many more pages to compare, but I leave that to the reader. My old main page is at: here and the main directory page of the offending website is here

Now, my site has grown considerably since then, and undergone many changes. In one sense I don't care that this individual has ripped off my pages because my site is progressing and is probably far better known, its also a more useful resource (and I think I can do webpages better than the other guy too). OTOH, I am really pissed off at the offense of having my site content stolen and being unable to do anything about it other than complain. I don't have the cash to take someone to court so that is not a feasible option, and I am tired of chasing this guy from one ISP to another (I have had his site removed from 3 servers so far and it just keeps reappearing elsewhere).

I found out about this because someone who had submitted their site to my website informed me that the same description had appeared on this other website, even though they did not submit their site description to that other site. Also, one of my websites ("Atho's Pagan Files Collection", now a part of Omphalos itself) is actually listed in the Bookstore's directory and *I* sure as hell didn't submit it there.

When I first discovered this I posted a complaint on my website accusing the other site of ripping me off, then contacted the webmaster. I should have done it the other way around, cause I got his back up and it became impossible to reason with him on this issue. My mistake freely admitted here. When I asked him about the similiarities between our site content, he had two comments:

1. Its just a coincidence that they are so similar.
2. I don't own a copyright on the contents of my site because it is not possible to have a copyright on webcontent.

So he refuses to listen to me, and the only recourse I have is to keep chasing him from server to server or sue him in court. I don't have the time or cash for either.

BTW if the subject matter of my site is of interest to you, please use the current version: http://www.omphalos.net

Any suggestions?

I run a website called Omphalos - its pretty small, its taken a lot of work to develop, and I don't make a dime off of it, so I am not upset at lost revenue or anything, but I have had my site content ripped off completely by some other individual in the past, and despite repeated attempts to get the situation resolved (which I handled badly at the start I admit) and despite chasing the guy across multiple webhosts I have still failed to get my stolen content removed from his site. I even contacted the EFF on this, but they do not deal with issues of copyright.

My website has completely changed since this event, so to illustrate the point I have to point to an older copy of the site that can be compared to the stolen version (which has undergone some changes too for that matter). Keep in mind we are talking content here not appearance. What was specifically taken from my site are the website descriptions and categories that were present in my directory. Here are some example pages:

1. My old page Beginner and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Beginner's Page
2. My old page Covens, Circles, Groves & Groups and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Covens Page.
3. My old page Paganism & Spirituality and the corresponding page on Under a Magic Spell Magickal Books Paganism & Spirituality Page
4. There are many more pages to compare, but I leave that to the reader. My old main page is at: here and the main directory page of the offending website is here

Now, my site has grown considerably since then, and undergone many changes. In one sense I don't care that this individual has ripped off my pages because my site is progressing and is probably far better known, its also a more useful resource (and I think I can do webpages better than the other guy too). OTOH, I am really pissed off at the offense of having my site content stolen and being unable to do anything about it other than complain. I don't have the cash to take someone to court so that is not a feasible option, and I am tired of chasing this guy from one ISP to another (I have had his site removed from 3 servers so far and it just keeps reappearing elsewhere).

I found out about this because someone who had submitted their site to my website informed me that the same description had appeared on this other website, even though they did not submit their site description to that other site. Also, one of my websites ("Atho's Pagan Files Collection", now a part of Omphalos itself) is actually listed in the Bookstore's directory and *I* sure as hell didn't submit it there.

When I first discovered this I posted a complaint on my website accusing the other site of ripping me off, then contacted the webmaster. I should have done it the other way around, cause I got his back up and it became impossible to reason with him on this issue. My mistake freely admitted here. When I asked him about the similiarities between our site content, he had two comments:

1. Its just a coincidence that they are so similar.
2. I don't own a copyright on the contents of my site because it is not possible to have a copyright on webcontent.

So he refuses to listen to me, and the only recourse I have is to keep chasing him from server to server or sue him in court. I don't have the time or cash for either.

BTW if the subject matter of my site is of interest to you, please use the current version: http://www.omphalos.net

Any suggestions?

I run a website called Omphalos - its pretty small, its taken a lot of work to develop, and I don't make a dime off of it, so I am not upset at lost revenue or anything, but I have had my site content ripped off completely by some other individual in the past, and despite repeated attempts to get the situation resolved (which I handled badly at the start I admit) and despite chasing the guy across multiple webhosts I have still failed to get my stolen content removed from his site. I even contacted the EFF on this, but they do not deal with issues of copyright.

My website has completely changed since this event, so to illustrate the point I have to point to an older copy of the site that can be compared to the stolen version (which has undergone some changes too for that matter). Keep in mind we are talking content here not appearance. What was specifically taken from my site are the website descriptions and categories that were present in my directory. Here are some example pages:

1. My old page Beginner and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Beginner's Page
2. My old page Covens, Circles, Groves & Groups and the corresponding page on Under a Magick Spell Magickal Books Covens Page.
3. My old page Paganism & Spirituality and the corresponding page on Under a Magic Spell Magickal Books Paganism & Spirituality Page
4. There are many more pages to compare, but I leave that to the reader. My old main page is at: here and the main directory page of the offending website is here

Now, my site has grown considerably since then, and undergone many changes. In one sense I don't care that this individual has ripped off my pages because my site is progressing and is probably far better known, its also a more useful resource (and I think I can do webpages better than the other guy too). OTOH, I am really pissed off at the offense of having my site content stolen and being unable to do anything about it other than complain. I don't have the cash to take someone to court so that is not a feasible option, and I am tired of chasing this guy from one ISP to another (I have had his site removed from 3 servers so far and it just keeps reappearing elsewhere).

I found out about this because someone who had submitted their site to my website informed me that the same description had appeared on this other website, even though they did not submit their site description to that other site. Also, one of my websites ("Atho's Pagan Files Collection", now a part of Omphalos itself) is actually listed in the Bookstore's directory and *I* sure as hell didn't submit it there.

When I first discovered this I posted a complaint on my website accusing the other site of ripping me off, then contacted the webmaster. I should have done it the other way around, cause I got his back up and it became impossible to reason with him on this issue. My mistake freely admitted here. When I asked him about the similiarities between our site content, he had two comments:

1. Its just a coincidence that they are so similar.
2. I don't own a copyright on the contents of my site because it is not possible to have a copyright on webcontent.

So he refuses to listen to me, and the only recourse I have is to keep chasing him from server to server or sue him in court. I don't have the time or cash for either.

BTW if the subject matter of my site is of interest to you, please use the current version: http://www.omphalos.net

Any suggestions?

When I first started my Omphalos website, I planned on using a Canadian domain - it was free, and I thought it should be easy to register.

When I applied, I came across two problems: first, I could only get "omphalos.vancouver.bc.ca" if I wanted to, because I was not represented by official organizations in more than one province, and second because Omphalos is not a legal entity I was told I could not apply in any case. In other words to even get an address at all I had to have some sort of legal status as an organization or something. This was complete bullshit.

Luckily omphalos.net was easily obtained.

Why would anyone go for a ultralong multidotted and impossible-to-remember national TLD which is hard to obtain, when they can get one of the top 3 so easily? (provided your choice of name is not already taken, granted).

Before national domains become popular for Joe and Jane Average, they need to be administered in such a fashion that they can easily be obtained without having to jump through multiple hoops and meet silly requirements...

I think I should have been able to register omphalos.ca just as easily as omphalos.net.

As a webmaster for several websites, I have always found the backlinks checking option on Google to be one of the neatest features of the site.

For those not familiar with how Google works: in part it measures the relevancy of a site based on how many other sites contain links to it. So it tracks these links, called Backlinks, and you can check them using Google search.

For instance, to see a list of webpages which contain links to Slashdot (and which are also indexed by Google of course, so its a subset of the web as a whole), we enter the following search in Google:

links: http://www.slashdot.org

The results displayed are the pages that contain links back to Slashdot.org. Note that this is by individual URL, so this list does not contain links to http://www.slashdot.org for instance.

Omphalos - The Directory and Search Engine for Paganism & Witchcraft!

It's thoroughly off topic, but this occured to me last night and I thought I would post it (now that I have found the key to the Bomb-shelter)

WE'LL RANT AND WE'LL ROAR:
(To the tune of "Spanish Ladies" (many versions) or "Rant And Roar" (Great Blue Sea for example))
By Phrogman (http://www.omphalos.net)

My nickname is "Troll-bait" or "Anonymous Coward",
My comments are leading so you'll have a go,
If you like Linux, I'll be MS-man,
You'll look hard to find me, cause my Karma's so low...

Chorus:
We'll rant and we'll roar like true Slashdot addicts,
We'll foam as we read with our threshold set low,
If its about Linux, we treat it like gospel,
'Cause if Slashdot will post it, we know that its so.

I like to pour hot grits down the front of my blue-jeans,
I'd love to see Natalie frozen like stone,
I don't have the brains to come up with a comment,
I would rather waste bandwidth like a meaningless drone.

(Chorus)

I am a true Slashgeek, my system runs linux,
My software is all GNU, and well-used,
My dreams are in hexcode, C, or assembler,
And I cannot sit still and see Penguin's abused.

(Chorus)

My claim is "First Poster", I don't have a purpose,
Never mind that there's three of us all in a row,
I refresh my browser every 2 seconds,
Just so I get the chance to let you all know.

(Chorus)

Redhat's not Linux, its only a distro,
We'll scream it out loud, till we're blue in the face,
There's Debian, Mandrake, Slackware and Suse,
And many a new one to take their place...

(Chorus)

I am a 5krip7 k1dd14, I am real 1337 now,
I can't do too much hacking 'cause my system is slow
But don't you upset me, or I'll have to show you,
That I can read Bugtraq and then have a go.

(Chorus)

I hate RIAA, I love to use Napster,
It still is the best source for Metallica's songs,
I'd love to buy CDs but I'm a poor student,
So if you ask me, song trading's not wrong.

(Chorus)

Silicon's divine, Transmeta's my Mecca,
Can't wait for my startup to go IPO,
I'm counting the days until we go public,
Now, if we had a product 'twould be an easier go.

(Chorus)

"Meta-moderating" is just fine by me now,
I love to downgrade the things I oppose,
If I think your comments are stupid, say goodbye to your Karma,
I just hope that my actions are never exposed.

(Chorus)

I am an MS-man, my software's not open,
But that doesn't mean my mind's totally closed,
Even though I must reboot every few hours,
I still have the right to think Linux is hosed.

(Chorus)

If an item is high-tech, bizarre or expensive,
I'll let you know that I think in this case,
A Beowulf cluster is surely in order,
Never mind that the cost'd be in outer space.

(Chorus)

My name is Jon Katz, you all love to hate me,
My stories all take a similar line,
I hated my teenage years, so now I'll explain 'em
Cause to me the whole world is post-Columbine.

(Chorus)

My name is Rob Malda, my shorts are asbestos,
My Geek-hobby website has certainly grown,
We got bought by Andover, and now we're employees,
Our impartial viewpoint is probably blown...

(Chorus)

My name is Slashdot, comprising 5 servers,
My Alteon load-balancer's not just for show,
If we post a link to your website, beware now,
When the Slashordes all visit - down it will go.

(Chorus)

So, we would be adding a checkbox to grant /. permission to republish a specific comment, and a checkbox to grant them permission to delete a comment if required on a messsage-by-message basis? Excellent idea. I will have to incorporate that into my own php-based /.-like code (http://www.omphalos.net). Great ideas all....

By default these would have to be unchecked, but there could be a preferences panel option to automatically check them if the user so desires - assuming that this would not be challengable legally somehow. Perhaps we need to require a user to explicitly check their comments when submitting (so as to avoid the same criticisms that are applied to most software license agreements - which most folk do not read I am sure)...

I applied for a position in the PHP programming language category. I am a PHP programmer, and use it on a daily basis. I supplied 8 sites on the subject which were not listed in the directory under that category. All of the sites were directly related to PHP programming - many of them were well known sites that should be listed if that category of the directory was to be of any use to visitors.

I am not sure about what you mean by "competitors" - unless you are assuming I applied to edit the category on Canadian search engines/Directories - which I did not. Certainly if I had been editing a category which directly affected my work position I would have listed our competitors. The point of becoming an editor was to help the internet population as a whole - to give back to the community so to speak - not to advance my company or any such thing. I understand that this does happen, and that they might wish to avoid those sorts of situations. That is why I did not volunteer for that sort of category. I did not want to be rejected because someone perceived the potential for abuse as a cause to reject my application.

At the time I was somewhat miffed I admit, now I am just blase about it. I made the effort to volunteer - if they are stupid enough to reject my help then what can I do? Go on to other projects I suppose, its not like I have any free time anyways - the moment I finish one project I take up another.

I should mention that in addition to my listed employment activities, I also maintain a directory of my own as a hobby - http://www.omphalos.net. I suppose I have directories on the brain.

Thanks for the compliment on the site. As you can see it also offers a slashdot-like message interface (entirely original PHP3 and mysql code BTW), a directory of links to over 375 Wiccan and Pagan websites, and - most recently - a true search engine that indexes the content of the websites listed in the directory (currently we have indexed over 21000 pages of material).

Omphalos was probably the first Pagan directory when it was originally created back in 1997 or so, and as far as I can tell its now the first true search engine (most sites index only their own sites contents).

Now if I can just get the word out to folks to let them know the site exists....

I maintain a website called Omphalos which contains some 18Mb or so of text files relating to modern Wicca, Paganism and the occult. The files are divided into 26 categories and are accessible from the menu on the bottom left of the main page. There are also humour files, SCA stuff, etc.

This is all stuff from the old BBS days preserved from when I closed down my Fidonet/PODS BBS and moved to the internet. The materials used to be maintained in a website called Atho's Pagan Files Collection but I have since consolidated the two websites.

Or you can write your own, and manage to get a few users using it. I wrote my own version in PHP3, and because of that I now understand the interface much better than if I had simply setup the existing slashcode version and used it. I would recommend that anyone who wants to create a similiar interface design their own, rather than use the slashcode per se. I admit, mine is simpler, and lacks a lot of features that slashdot has, but I understand it all, and can make any required changes myself. Decrypting someone elses perl scripting is a task I do not want to contemplate facing. Of course, my site focuses on an entirely different topic and some adds features that slashdot doesn't have as well.

I have not read the perl scripts for slashdot, so my version is based entirely on my own code. I did spend a lot of time analyzing the slashdot site from the user's perspective though, so some variables have the same names for instance. My site has a long way to go still of course.

The essential problem for prospective webmasters is that the current slashdot already covers technical issues so well, and with such a large audience that encouraging folks to visit another site on the same topics is basically impossible. Why visit the lesser cousin when the original site has so much more information? If you are focusing on a different topic, with a different prospective audience you might stand a chance of success...

Its a long, slow uphill battle to get sufficient traffic to make a slashdot-like interface useful to users. I am only just starting to make some headway on this front, and I think the only reason I have made any headway at all is that I already had an audience before I redesigned the site to include a messageboard system.

Oh, if you are curious, my site is called Omphalos, and is located at: http://www.omphalos.net and focuses on modern Paganism (so its not for all users).

I suggested we should consider a graphic to display on one's website that links to this story, and one appeared in my email. Matt sent me this image located here.

He told me I could "do with it what you will" - well I suggest anyone who feels inclined should post this on their website, and link it back to this story here on /.

If you have a website and you choose to add this graphic to it, let me know your site URL - you can email me at atho@pagans.org

If I get a chance and enough folks to this then I will create a site that lists all the ones that display this banner.