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It would be GREAT to see them finally, 3 or 4 years later, dump the old theme and streamline it with CSS and stuff. Is it going to happen anytime soon. Probably not.....

I've read the 20 claims. None of them contradict the idea that any news site's weather report could meet any and all of these claims. ...(proceeds to itemized list of claims)

Funny that you mention size. Slashdot had, a while back, a story that had a huge number of comments. It was rendering at over 1MB of information to transfer.

So we went and created a css-themed theme for
slashcode.

Here's the size differences:

stock:
shtml page: 410.3 kb
nested: 1.9mb

slashcss:
shtml page: 330030 bytes
nested view: 1008300 bytes

slashstrict:
shtml page: 252.6kb
nested: 983.8kb nested

That's quite a difference!! It's amazing what you can do with CSS.

• Too much white space
• abuse of the allowed HTML elements
• short, ALL CAPS subjects, or high percentage of post in caps
• odd punctuation (too many exclamation points, for example)
• very short posts (such as "First Post!")
• posting too quickly (/. has a 2-minute manditory delay between posts)
• filters for known bad sources / known bad phrases
• filters for unknown symbols (including the Euro and other currencies, which is a frequent complaint)

frob

Last I recall this was discussed they said they had a beast of a quad-cpu mysql4 server as primary, with slaved replicators for read-only things.

They're using innodb tables more and more (see the slashcode), along with http://www.danga.com/memcached/

Can you make Slash compliant with HTML x.x?

No, but YOU can! Slash is fully customizable. You can edit the templates to suit your taste. See the HOWTO documents for themes, plugins, and templates.

Duh.

Go look at Slash/Utility/Data.pm and scroll down to sub breakHtml. The constant comment_startword_workaround defines whether or not the Microsoft-bug-workaround is applies.

---

The Columbia mission was an international affair. The Columbia carried more than 80 experiments sponsored by space agencies, universities, and organizations from around the world. When the shuttle disintegrated, five Americans were killed, but also an Indian (Kalpana Chawla) and an Israeli (Ilan Ramon). The world mourned together because it was an international loss.

Furthermore, a tragedy for NASA potentially boded badly for the ISS, since the U.S. is by far the largest sponsor. A setback for the American space program is truly a setback for the whole world. The loss of life in Brazil is very sad, but as to the progress of space exploration as a whole, the world will hardly notice. That is not an insult. It's simply a fact that Brazil has a relatively small, fledgeling space program, which is not nearly as consequential as more mature space programs of other nations. I express my condolences and do wish them the best.

---

The Columbia mission was an international affair. The Columbia carried more than 80 experiments sponsored by space agencies, universities, and organizations from around the world. When the shuttle disintegrated, five Americans were killed, but also an Indian (Kalpana Chawla) and an Israeli (Ilan Ramon). The world mourned together because it was an international loss.

Furthermore, a tragedy for NASA potentially boded badly for the ISS, since the U.S. is by far the largest sponsor. A setback for the American space program is truly a setback for the whole world. The loss of life in Brazil is very sad, but as to the progress of space exploration as a whole, the world will hardly notice. That is not an insult. It's simply a fact that Brazil has a relatively small, fledgeling space program, which is not nearly as consequential as more mature space programs of other nations. I express my condolences and do wish them the best.

Email is of course the traditional business tool and works well enough. Technically savvy users can shunt all messages with the word 'Pfizer' or 'Novartis' or 'IBM' into folders according to job and have a forensic record of everything that was said via email.

But the technical sophistication of any group of business users is likely to be too low to do anything more to hit 'send'. What I like about this site is how conversations sort of evolve organically and the cream of the discussions have a tendency (note: I did not say absolutely that they always do) rise to the top. (Okay, so I may be in the minority in that opinion ;)

So, my question is, what about using Slash as a business tool? Say that the tech dept (yo soy un capitano, aqui) sets up a linux box running slash, mySql, PHP, Apache and sets up a page where folks could blog about the "work" that they are doing? With headlines reading, instead of things like "Linus to star in toothpaste commercial", it could have "stories" representing "Pfizer Job#2071" and the like? Managers would then moderate the discussions? I thought of this while at a company retreat where we were discussing different information processing techniques.

And yes, business users may not be that technically savvy, but browing at -1 would be enough to convince one it doesn't take much mental "juice" to blog (or moderate for that matter). It's a weird idea, but I wonder if it might have potential?

Mr. Morgan made an interesting point about online communication with representatives, now that "wierd knick-knack gifts" could be misconstrued as bioweapons (especially the staple remover that's been in the drawer next to last month's tuna fish sandwich).

But I've always assumed that any value of online communication would be offset by the volume of 1337 mail -- mostly unintentional. "yOUr rite their otta bee a lAw!"

I'd like to see a tech-savvy representative adopt some form of Slashcode-based constituent feedback system. Articles could be the issues currently on the rep's plate, plus a "catchall" for general feedback. Let the (unpaid) interns do the moderation, and then the rep can read at +2 to +5 depending on workload.

I may make a run for office in the next few years, and I'd be glad to use a Slash-like system for public discussion of my positions. But I agree with Morgan -- a well-written one-page letter with a finite number of defensible points will be much more effective than a Unabomer-style manifesto.

Of course, if it was open-source, I'm sure the community could find ways of optimizing it such that abuses could be nearly eliminated.

Slashcode is free software under the GPL. The biggest abuse I see here on Slashdot is abuse of the M2-immune "overrated" moderation.

The other reason is that the markup is simpler, more portable, and less bandwidth intensive. How about that?... And your newly marked up pages will be noticably heavier than the table layout.

You're on crack, and I can prove it

Here's a simple example. Go check out Slashcode.com, and look at the cute little boxes on the left and right sides of the page. The HTML necessary to generate those boxes with a TABLE layout and no CSS is so long and convoluted I can't even post it because of the lameness filter. It's 30 lines long, 1700 characters not including content, and contains 55 HTML tags. That's not ecen the worst news, which is that all that shitty markup has to be downloaded once for each table -- 9 times for slashcode.com.

Following is the HTML necessary to generate the identical box using only CSS:

<div class="fancybox">
<h2 class="fancybox">Box Title</h2>
[content]
</div>

div.fancybox {
border : 0;
background-color : #fff;
margin : 0 3px 10px 3px;
padding : 0;
}
div.fancybox h2 {
font-family : verdana,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;
font-size : 12px;
color : #fff;
margin : 0;
padding : 1px 0px 1px 5px;
background-color : #369;
}

I don't know what is more pathetic: that you would make requests just to see X-Bender headers, or that I would know where to look in the slashcode CVS to see the list (scroll down to the end of that page.)

Being a small bit of a geek, I think myself qualified to say whether a term is esoteric or not, and I must say, I've never seen FOSS in my life before. My first thought was "How is my local tourist goods shop suddenly competing with Microsoft on a global scale?".

Free Open Source Software (FOSS). Thanks, that's what I want. More adjectives. And, once more, have them all thrown into an acronym I can't recognize. That's not going to encourage cliquishness or scare away people who might otherwise be interested.

I even thought to look at E2 to see if the obscure FOSS had been noded. If it had been, a little link could have at least been provided to make this more accessible. Nope. Then again, I remember reading something in the Slash CVS which mentioned the E2 linking (with those little question marks) was broken.

Being a small bit of a geek, I think myself qualified to say whether a term is esoteric or not, and I must say, I've never seen FOSS in my life before. My first thought was "How is my local tourist goods shop suddenly competing with Microsoft on a global scale?".

Free Open Source Software (FOSS). Thanks, that's what I want. More adjectives. And, once more, have them all thrown into an acronym I can't recognize. That's not going to encourage cliquishness or scare away people who might otherwise be interested.

I even thought to look at E2 to see if the obscure FOSS had been noded. If it had been, a little link could have at least been provided to make this more accessible. Nope. Then again, I remember reading something in the Slash CVS which mentioned the E2 linking (with those little question marks) was broken.

Think:

Real time audio streaming of town meetings, city council, public court hearings. You've got the bandwidth to setup and sustain a few hundred streaming realplayer connections.

Keep a consistent interface. I would suggest a web-based initiative, because you can find content management systems (I use this one, but there's more of them, where you could setup a simple username and password interface to let everyone logon, use web-based email, get local alerts etc.

Think of seeing the pictures of a wanted suspect everywhere in the neighborhood in seconds. Grab a mugshot, scan it in, and boom, thanks to integrating your phone service through this (which, if you don't, you'll look at yourself in 10 years and really kick yourself) the guy won't be able to go anywhere near a residential neighborhood without getting tagged. A phone call (or special ring?) will alert you to an "emergency message" provided via email, instead of having to hear about it through the TV (and all the rigamarole that entails, compared to just sending out an email). Think of weather alerts in this same vein. A blizzard coming and you need to warn the masses?

Keep wireless access points around town. I mean, if its in the city limits and you're going to go, go all the way. That way if their notebook has a wireless card, they can still sit in the restaraunt and eat quietly while surfing the net.

Everyone gets an email address that is not spammed and can only be used for city business and contacts. This is a peculiar idea consider, but it would assure that you would never, ever, get spam from this address. This one you can throw away, but I thought I would throw it in the mix.

Teleconferencing intra-city. With video. Nuff said. (Think X-11 or something. You can push the bandwidth.)

If you integrate your phone service through this line, the shared cost would be more than enough to keep a techie or two onhand for support, a few DNS/Web/FTP servers running, etc etc.

Just a few ideas. There is no way this cannot help your town, and I congratulate you in your efforts. Good luck.

Post ASCII art; some of Slash's regexp based filters will trip over (i.e. eat literally years of CPU time if allowed to run indefinately) on certain strings, and such comments are allowed to pass. Just run your informative comment through cowsay(1) ;)

You can look at the filter runner and the compression check in Slash/Utility/Access/Access.pm (filterOK()/compressOK()), but I can't seem to find the actual regexp's they use (should be in the db schema, but I guess you have to make your own).

while slashdot has hidden it's equivalent karma system (and most regulars have topped out anyway)

There is a fix. All you need to do is get into the mysql console (should be simple enough - someone here must work at the colo) and execute:

UPDATE vars SET value='1000000' WHERE name='maxkarma';
UPDATE vars SET value='1' WHERE name='karma_obfuscate';

The result: Plenty of Karma to attain, and you'll be able to see the values again.

Check out the db values from the CVS.

I always thought /. was the best way to keep up with the worst software...

Close! The site you are looking for is www.slashcode.com

Is it true that some companies are so overcome with script bias that they'd assign years of unnecessary work rather than give it to the coding untouchables?"

or do you see the /. links changing colors today as well ???

Or something in slashcode changing....

HELP NEEDED - Switching to Linux from Windows

About 3 hours ago, I bought SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional for 79.99.

Should I return it and get the $149.99 RedHat 8.0 Professional ?

Which is the best Linux Distro ? And which has the best usability (fonts, performance, compabitility etc.) vs price ratio ?

I am also planning to run a website using slashcode someday...

(I have extensive programming experience on IBM OS/400 and Windows (95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP). I worked on C/C++ and Unix in college (days of vi editor) so I am hoping that switching to Linux won't be too difficult)

Thanks /. readers for your suggestions :-)

About 3 hours ago, I bought SuSE Linux 8.1 Professional for 79.99.

Should I return it and get the $149.99 RedHat 8.0 Professional ?

Which is the best Linux Distro ? And which has the best usability (fonts, performance, compabitility etc.) vs price ratio ?

I am also planning to run a website using slashcode someday...

Thanks for your suggestions :-)

I thought MySQL was the database used in POS systems!

There is absolutely no interest in this sort of products. See this site for details.

Are there weblogs that allow users to discuss music much like Slashdot discusses "news"?

The author of the article got it wrong. It should read The popular discussion site for fans of open source software will disclose that it's perilously close to bankruptcy and will rewrite and abstract SlashCode into .NET components using Visual Basic which it will license and monitor through Microsoft Passort ...

If you see a duplicate, you can mail the story's author. If the story is still quiet, we may pull it down. However, once the comments are rolling in, we often leave the story up so that the discussion can continue.

Some people have suggested that there might be a software solution to this problem. If you think you've got one, visit the Slashcode site and submit a diff. As long as it isn't a performance hit, I'd consider using it. (Be aware however that the trick of searching for duplicate URLs isn't as helpful as you might think, since the same story can appear in multiple locations.)

Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 10/28/00

Why don't people quit complaining about duplicate articles and actually do something to solve it? (see above)

If you like the way this site works, you can get the code here.

...and oh yea, my first 'first post'!?! It does feel as warm and fuzzy as I thought it would... (and I even had time to spell check! =)

What makes it even worse is that SlashCode has a built in spell-checker for submitted. Either the editors deliberately disabled it on Slashdot, or are consistantly ignoring it.

I'm not interested in a language war, but your take on what CGI.pm is for is a little off. If you want to "talk CGI" (which is a very simple protocol for communicating with the Web server and ultimately with a client), you use CGI.pm to do so.

If you want to dynamically generate content for the Web, you use Bricolage, Slash or any of the other fine packages out there. Bricolage is especially nice, as it is based on HTML::Mason, a very nice templating system for HTML. Slash, you may know from some of the sites that were built with it....

You can find a nice bit of discussion on the topic, here.

Of course, if you just want to give up on Perl because you ran across CGI.pm and thought it was ugly, that's fine too.

If the problem with this proposal is sifting through all the trash, how about somebody combine this idea with SlashCode, so we can get moderated indie music. Moderators grade the songs and bands, individual users give personalized preferences, and the stuff you want to hear rises to the top. The technology is all out there -- it's just waiting for somebody with a lot of time on their hands . . . . and who doesn't care that there's no obvious business model . . . oh, well

Because that would involve them either manually downloading and saving the cached copy or actually spending time to write code to automatically download and cache a copy of everything that's linked. If you want the feature, submit the patch to slashcode. Then it might eventually end up on slashdot.

But in this case it wouldn't help at all since it's more of an application than a web site. All the pages are dynamic... it's like trying to cache Google.

linex.org appears to be using Slash for their website interface :-) Nice co-incidence!

Well, one could wait for the paid staff to get around to it, but there's always the option of taking things into one's own hands...

Use Slash.

You can get it here.

Just look at how versatile it is

Exhibit 1
Exhibit 2
Exhibit 3

The instructions for turning on the shopping cart code are in the source.

If you're an idiot, yeah.
Slashcode inserts a space into long strings - this helps prevent page-widening posts. Notice the space in the URL? That needs to be removed in order for the link address to be properly resolved. True, the asshat who posted it could have taken an extra few seconds and made a clickable link, but the fault is not really his and it isn't really Microsoft's. It is the result of abusive (Klerck, I'm looking at you) or ignorant users. If people would refrain from posting long unbroken strings this particular mess could be avoided.
Such is life.
Have a Coke and a smile.

Actually, one of the barriers to mod_perl use is that mod_perl by default does *not* provide transparent wrapping of CGI programs. It can be made to do so using PerlRun modules but I think it's just a case that a documentation needs to be more prominent about this fact that vanilla Apache::Registry scripts behave significantly different from CGI. Perhaps the documentation should advertise more the PerlRun modules (etc) that do give transparent CGI wrapping. I like many others have fallen into the trap of just blindly switching a script from CGI to mod_perl and bitten by many of the (documented) issues if you bother to RTFM which of course I didn't at first =)

Now that I know mod_perl indepth, the parent is correct in the immense flexibility of mod_perl with its ability to directly interface with Apache. Something you won't be able to do ever with CGI or even PHP.

And about You can write whole content management systems using mod_perl, and in fact many have. Of course the CMS running here at Slashdot is powered by Slashcode which runs under Apache/mod_perl.

An error occured while loading http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/codedoc/ind ex.shtml: Timeout on server Timed out while waiting to connect to artport.whitney.org

Seems good to me!

Essential Computing Stuff

Chapter 1: Turn the damn thing on
Chapter 2: Read what is on screen. It will ussually tell you what to do
Chapter 3: It your computer, turn it off if you don't like what it does
Chapter 4: Trouble Shooting: Shoot anything that moves

Look, if your blogging you euther know what your doing or your going to contract with someone who does.

This seems more like a FAQ on SlashCode or a give away item at shows then an actual book.

If you don't like it, fix it. Code up your solution to the problem and sumbit it to Taco. Remember that it has to be scalable to work on a site as big as Slashdot. Go here for details.

This thing doesn't write itself people.

Have you noticed that your URL has an embedded space in it? Slashdot does that to posts. Go here. You just might learn something.

It seems your question is a bit badly researched before "Ask Slashdot", but anyhow..

I have personal experience with the following :

- eZ Publish (PHP, *nix, MySQL/PgSQL based)
- Slashcode (Perl, *nix, MySQL based)
- PHP Nuke (PHP, MySQL based)

I wouldnt recommend PHP Nuke, but have little experience with the forks off it.. (Check Freshmeat.net as someone suggested).

eZ Publish is the closest I have seen a complete GPL CMS (Content Management Solution), and integrating some of the addons or buying the desktop edition makes it very easy to use!Highly recommended, and now comes in an easy to install Debian package too ! :) (As of woody, apt-cache search ezpublish and then apt-get install the package ..)

Slashcode is possibly one of the better weblogs, although you should possibly check these too, if that is the kind of website you need :

- Scoop
- Drupal

For non "LAMP", based on Tcl and the AOLServer webserver, check out OpenACS, which is reportedly very feature rich.

I do not have personal experience with either Scoop, Drupal or OpenACS, but several sites use them and produce great sites with them.

Good luck !

Despite the immediate speed increase which could come from migrating to a real database which supports grown-up DB features like subselects, etc, I don't see it happening on Slashdot anytime soon.

Not to flamebait here, but if you've gone through Slashcode source, you know that it's a pile of spaghetti. It doesn't lend itself to a redesign of the database access methods to take advantage of an industry-quality DB's featureset, at least not without redesigning much of Slashcode itself.

The resulting weblog software could be really badass, but seeing as this site's gone since 1998 without a significant redesign (Slash 2 is Slash 1 with lipstick on), I don't see it suddenly happening now.

I can't believe this was modded up to +3.

"Apache and Perl was the way to go in 1996, but times have changed." What?! This is the same type of fallacious argument that Microsoft uses against UNIX; "it's 30 years old, it can't be any good!"

Of course, generally, the entire reason one uses a high-level language (like Perl, or Python, or PHP, or whatever...) is because quickly putting something together is more important than lightning-fast speed. It's safe to say that web development is one of those tasks which generally benefits more from the former than the latter. With this in mind, your (unsupported claims) of Perl CGI's "efficiency" problems are irrelevant. Could we see something like benchmarks, or any kind of evidence?

Your comment about "serious" webmasters "doing it" in "Java or C" for "serious speed" strikes me as being particularly odd. Your use of the word "serious" seems quite silly; there are plenty of serious 'webmasters' using Perl. As for the languages you mention, almost no one uses C; that defeats the entire purpose of general web development methodology. Again, your claims are completely unsupported by any further evidence.

Personally, if I need to do any web scripting, I have my own language of choice.

Unable to stop a wave of trolling at SlashCode.com, the site janitors were forced to disable AC posting. This move is to compensate for the shitty lameness filter and the IP bans any teenager could circumvent with help from Google.

After one night of unmoderated trolling, the site janitors were forced to disable AC posting. CmdrTaco was seen sobbing and muttering "They can't be stopped" while CowboyNeal and Jamie McCarthy proclaimed the ban "The ultimate lameness filter" overlooking the inherent irony.