Slashdot Mirror

Well, look at the source.

Slashcode is currently distributed under GNU GPL 2, which allows modification and (apparently) ASPing (using code to run a service without distributing binaries) without requiring modified source to be disclosed. GNU GPL 3 will have restrictions on ASPing, which <IANAL>may be construed as a public performance under copyright law</IANAL>.

Slashdot is presumably running a highly customized Slashcode installation. Fat chance you'll find lameness filters in the tarball.

I've currently spent almost $10,000 negotiating with Ohio State University over my SlashSite, http://www.ReadingRecovery.com. I can attest that, no matter how silly all of this is, it can be extremely costly. Although all lawyers are jackasses, not all of them give you the courtesy of a cease and desist notice-- sometimes they file suit right away. You can read the details of my little drama on my site and in the Ohio Dispatch. It hasn't been fun and could still bankrupt me. :-( eMails of support are welcome!

Assuming you're new here-There is a "slashdot reader" that someone put out on Freshmeat. I haven't had any problems with the defaults here so I haven't bothered to try it out yet but you wish to, and feel free to modify it to your liking. Also bear in mind that slashdot is an open source project. You can always submit a patch and if they like it who knows...

Fist Prost

"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."

Yes, the registry contains lots of nifty information. Besides the stuff you mention, it can store your passwords. If you have Auto complete enabled it'll even store your credit card numbers.

There are several things your browser sends, and its available to any web server. Your browser brand and version, language, the URL you clicked through from, your IP address etc. A server can tell if you have Javascript enabled. Most of the stuff a web server can detect about you is defined in the HTTP standard. Yes, Microsoft was collecting this information. Then again, Slashdot collects the same information. /. knows your IP, browser version, Javascript capability, how long you stay, how often you visit, etc. Read the code. But so what. Most commercial websites collect this information.

However the registry and the information a browser sends are two very different things. There is no way a web server can get to your registry. And there are no secret API's that only Microsoft knows about. It would be way too much of a security risk, and someone would have blown the whistle a long time ago.

Actually, you would have more luck reading their registry than the other way around. IIS 4.0 and up provided a component that provided access to the web servers registry through a web page. You are able to set things up to perform any system admin task through a web page, if you want. Pretty insecure, if you asked me.

I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.

One place to go is sites that use the slashcode.

and it's called slash. I think some of you may have heard of it before. :-)

Seriously, slash is very similar to the system they described and it would be mondo prior art.
--

I believe that slapdash.org is one of the domains that someone registered to point to slashdot...when they had the server change slapdash stopped working, when I asked about it on slashcode it was news, at least to pudge, so it seems that the /. crew had nothing to do with that one.

Fist Prost

"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."

I wonder if the vulnerability came from poking and prodding slashcode, or from a break into the database server?

There is really no way for IOC the enforce this. I know a couple (1,2 of sites which are reporting about the games with background information (all the sites mentioned are Dutch btw, though both running copies of slashcode so you should feel at home :-) ). Our stories come from spectators which have close relationships to the athletes.

Honestly, how can you place something which is happening in public under copyright? It would be the same thing as the US copyrighting the Gulf-war.

Someone mentioned only 7% of the revenues is actively being used for covering the games. The rest goes to the developing countries. That's weird I did not know Belgium was a Third World country, yet they cant pay enough money for everything they want to cover. That really sux. The IOC might need to sponsor Belgium in addition as well then.

Some athletes row, others just do sports. Skøll

Sounds like a job for slashcode, where each file addition to the achive can be a "story" with a short abstract of the addition.

Thats kind of like ShouldExist.org Its a kind of idea exchange place. Sounds a whole lot like your idea (but it doesn't run slashcode, it runs scoop.

john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!

Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if

This leads me to believe the working (sale curve increasing) website is one that has a different look and feel to it, thus requiring high degrees of individuality in design.
I would disagree with that strongly. Experience with ANY UI is that users tend to prefer packages that look-and-feel the same as things they already know and use, but with different content - The more consistant your user interface is across different packages in a suite, the more usable it is considered to be (and the more each package adds to the value of the OTHER packages in the suite). There is no reason this isn't valid for websites, and many people already say it is.
If a user is familiar with site a, and does click-pulldown-select-order to get (say) a book, then goes to YOUR site and does click-pulldown-select-order to get (say) a CD, then he will be pleased with himself for how quickly he did that, and state he feels "comfortable" with the site, when in fact he is merely conditioned to the style of the site from elsewhere. If you need proof, think of the time it took to figure out exactly what goes where here on slashdot - then go to any of the Slashcode sites and note how familiar it feels - even though the content and style is different, the interface is reassuringly the same.
--

Check out www.indymedia.org for links to the independent media centers that are covering the conventions (with as much access that they can get, which generally means the streets, and the shadow convention..) www.phillyimc.org for RNC and la.indymedia.org for DNC and www.freespeech.org for live and archived TV coverage or get it on Dish Network Channel 9415 ask your local cable company, public access, or public television station, or get it on your BUD (big ugly dish - KU band) Lots of other links for a few live radio/audio broadcasts can be had there...
And even if you dont agree with the politics one way or another (or arn't even from the US/care about the US) then at very least you might find it interesting that the IMC sites are based upon a hacked up version of slash that supports multimedia submissions

Which probably explains why one of the biggest goals in the slashcode is database independence.

With 200,000+ users, slashdot is not exactly a small application anymore.

They probably did not implement the 60 second wait in the admin's part of the code (although that may be shortly rectified), so the wait only applies to us readers' posts. And if you were honestly making a code inquiry regarding Slash rather than just taking a lame shot at Slashdot, you should check out Slashcode for information and discussion regarding Slash.

Deo

I'm going to put my name all over Slashcode. It'll be a shoe-in!

I've have not yet read the book, but I gather it's about (in part) the rise of libertarianism in the cyber-community. One reason for the rise in general, I think is the that our freedoms are being taken away at a faster rate than ever before (no proof, just oppinion). It's certainly amazing how much this is happening, and it was a large motivating factor me to start Liberty Rally. It's a slash site that focuses on disappearing freedoms, government excesses, etc. We attempt to track down relevent stories, so that people will be aware of how much is happening that they never new of. (We're young, at only a month old, so bear with us as we grow).

I have not read the book. What irritates me most about this is the blatant name-calling in the title. I disagree strongly with (modern) liberal beliefs, but I don't call everyone who supports them stupid.

What about starting and administering a school Slashsite? Code available HERE!

Shouldn't you be posting this over at slashcode?

Shouldn't you be posting this over at slashcode?

I was checking out Slashcode.com the other day because I wanted to submit some patches to create some desperately needed features (killfiles and nick-changing). But then I realized that while some patches have been submitted, none have ever been accepted. What's up with this. Also, if they ever DO get accepted, will they ever run on slashdot.org?
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!

Whoops, scoop.kuro5hin.org seems to be down right now, not surprisingly. You can still the Scoop project on sourceforge, though.

Given my experience with Slashcode, I have noticed that the moderator interface for posting submissions allows the moderator to select which items are most worthy to appear on the "front" page. If the moderator chooses not to place the submission on the front page, the only way to discover the post's existence would be to monitor the slashbox for that particular topic .. or monitor that topic's main page.

Slashdot does NOT use doubleclick.net for any of its ads. Apparently you are unware that there are other ways to put images on pages for revenue -- ways that don't involve leaving cookies or tracking you as you surf. This article explains AndOver.Net's ad delivery system, which incidentally is an open-source project hosted on Sourceforge. As a matter of fact, /. only sets one cookie, which contains your login information.

Slashdot does NOT use doubleclick.net for any of its ads. Apparently you are unware that there are other ways to put images on pages for revenue -- ways that don't involve leaving cookies or tracking you as you surf. f orge</a>. As a matter of fact, /. only sets one cookie, which contains your login information.

Anyone with a little perl knowledge can go a long way towards making a slashcode site into a customer support, file download, or of course a news and events website.

Anyways, here's the slashsites in case anyone is interested.

• Media-Mixer
• RadioTiki
• ipv6news.org
• PRIME Wrestling
• Knowledgerush
• High Performance Hunting
• marketseat.com
• ExtraCrispy.Net
• YourOfficeGeek
• ITCouncil
• Morrissey Solo
• The Cedar Valley Linux Users Group
• EastVan
• earthDot
• meepdot
• Love9
• MedMeta
• jazz-flute.com
• jazz-sax.com
• SigKill
• University of Utah College of Engineering Computing Facility
• Mr. Lego
• FuelCellTalk
• Portland Geekly News
• The Golden Horde Network
• use Perl;
• MacSlash
• bottomquark
• We Have No Product
• TQY3
• gildot
• Tar Heel State Online
• SlashHosting (Hosting for Slash sites)
• slashhost (Hosting for Slash sites)
• IDM Newsbase
• gosports.org
• Anime Station
• NetGAMES
• OnTopofIT
• Web Crush
• HairyPALM.com: The PDA InfoQuarters
• Myworkflow.com
• Techdirt.com
• Be Route (French)
• Yourtown CLN
• DNS Policy
• BarraPunto (Spanish)
• isrec.org
• AbsolutChaos
• Extreme XL Linux News
• Spam Roaster's Club

To prevent the further decline of slashdot in to it's official stage of "sold out", I've decided to put a stop to people other than CmdrTaco adding quickies to the front page. In the words of my mother, "It's just not right". The patches are available for download at slashcode.

try http://www.macslash.com/. Not only does it use /.'s code but you can post programming articles/questions to a mac orientated crowd.

Of course, there is a line in the GPL which keeps you from being able to attach any extra restrictions to the license. I've known of a few places, Slashdot being one of them, who have tried to violate that, probably unknowingly. For instance, take a look at the code page for Slashdot, and notice where Rob says you have to link back to Slashdot. I'm sure that was an honest mistake on his part, and if you take a look at the license on Slashcode, you'll see that the restriction isn't included there.

The point is that I think dragging licenses together is adding extra restrictions to the GPL, something that is clearly forbidden in it's body.

Brad Johnson
--We are the Music Makers, and we
are the Dreamers of Dreams

OK, so I am going to be installing the Slash code to run a portion of my web site. My major question of the day (Or at least my Major 4:00 AM Question of the Day) is:

Can I run the Slash code on a *BSD? If so, does it require any special considerations?

What does Slashdot use for their server OS? They credit Debian and Red Hat on the Slash Code Site, but I haven't seen what they are using. I'd really be interested in finding out what distro it is, not because I'd necessarily use it, but because it might help me decode the Slash documentation. I've run Caldera, Mandrake, and SuSE before, but I'm willing to try others of course.

Anyway, I was also considering running OpenBSD or FreeBSD as my web server OS for Dragonfly Dynamix, but then I decided in the car today on the way home that I wanted to run the Slash code...

Anyway, I know this is slightly off-topic, but I at least nailed the right forum. Right? Guys? Right?

*gulp*

*Watches Karma plummet...*

=P

However, if Al Gore(or any other politician) set up a moderated forum like this one, I would be far more likely to visit.

What do you think of the idea of using the slashcode as a basis for an interactive political site?

GrnArrow
grnarrow@removethis.bottomquark.com

I didn't need the OOP theory (having written a book myself that taught OOP to people without any prior programming experience). I didn't need the Perl introduction (having just forced myself to learn perl after avoiding it for being the blight of a PL that it is (albeit useful) in order to change slash). So what did it it offer?

• Using Perl packages as objects? Nope. Got that from the Ostrich.
• Subroutines as methods? Nope. Second thing I did (after twinking a calendar package to use slash's user table and cookies) was create a Slash::Sql wrapper around the "do/execute/fetchrow" nonsense of DBI.
• Persistence? Nope. Third thing I did was make a Slash::Object class, which could read itself from an Sql database, and had an AUTOLOAD corresponding to the columns in the table.
• Multimethods? Okay, this was slightly useful. I caught from skimming the book that there was a multimethod package on cpan. Went there, did a search, then did perl -MCPAN -e "install Class::Multimethod" and I was done.

Perl's syntax is often opaque (especially if you didn't already know all the Unix utilities, shell scripting langs and programming langs it is based on). It ispowerful, but this book didn't quite seem to get it all. Closures, non-class-based inheritance (a la Self), or even some more useful examples? (the fourth thing I did was make a Slash::Handler class to interface to Apache, automatically placing query args or form input into fields on itself - subclass and override "handle" to decide what to do) (fifth thing was a subclass of Slash::Handler to use Text::Metatext to generate the page).

A nice enough book, but I think I'm gonna have to write one myself before I see one I really like :-)

I'm following the Slashcode project for the creation of the next version of Slash (the software running Slashdot, more or less) and I have to admit that it's very very far from being optimized.

In fact, there are no mod_perl handlers but just regular CGI scripts (the .pl files you find in a Slashdot URL); it's far to use the full power of mod_perl

This has come up over and over again, and it's not a good idea.

Say there are about 400 stories in the queue right now. If that queue were made public, you'd see it jump to about 900, I bet, if not more. And the headlines would probably mostly match a search on the words 'hot grits', 'oog', 'portman', 'penis', 'fuck', 'trolls on parade'

Maybe that could be addressed with another layer of moderation. But I think that kinda misses the point-- the owners of this site are the benevolent dictators and gatekeepers. Slashdot is, ultimately, theirs. If you disagree, visit SlashCode.

Hello Mr Greenspun,

Mr Malda's creation is a great success story -- I for one am not much of a geek but I spend at least as much time with Slashdot as with The New York Times. But it does have problems. The page of questions to you, for instance, is now 179k long and growing. That can be quite a long download for some.

If the Slashdot folks had hired Arsdigita to develop their site using the ArsDigita Community System , what would you do differently? I'd be very interested if you could touch on both the front and back end (more information on the Slashdot system at the Slashcode FAQ ).

Thanks for being a web development industry leader worthy of emulation.

Regards,

Adam Khan

After having slaved away for several weeks building an per/xml based content engine (Kumera), I started having a look around to see what else was out there, and got suddenly depressed.

The only saving grace was that is Australia, the cost of running a dedicated server is way too high, and so there is still space for a cgi-bin perl based system.

Although you may not be interested in all of this, I'm doing it for my own sanity and clarity ...

In my wandering I have found ...

http://slashcode.com/ - the content engine that slashdot is based on. Runs in mod_perl (or cgi-bin I guess), very sofisticated. Has daemons that run to collect content for the slashboxes and everything else we know and love about slashdot.

http://www.zope.org/ - not sure, I think it's a python based application server that has some content systems built around them, including (just to confuse you) http://squishdot.org/ which is the slashdot code ported to zope (I think)

http://frontier.userland.com/ - is a news system/engine that has a thing called manilla, http://manila.userland.com/ which is a front end to editing and so on. Frontier isn't free or open source, but very popular.

http://java.apache.org/jetspeed which is a portal based engine built on top of turbine which is an applicate framework for building applications. There is a content engine and discussion group system that are developed by someone else, who are expecting to open source the discussion groups, and provide source and binarys for a low cost of the content engine.

And there are a few more application systems, which are not exactly content management systems as such, but could be used to build some ... like cold fusion, active server pages, java server pages, php3, and the list goes on and on and on ...

The more I look there more there is ...

That sounds like a good question to ask on the Slash site instead of this one.

Um, yes it does. Please re-read the FAQ.

If you think the Slash code sucks, you have not looked at recently, and don't know what you are talking about. It could stand for a lot of improvements, which we are busy making. But it is far from sucktitude.

If you think Perl is slow, you are a stupid troll. Go away.

If you think SquishZopePHPYourMamaSlash is better than Slash, then by all means, use it and shut up about it.

If you have patches or want to otherwise participate in developing Slash, make sure you post it on the Slashcode site (or better yet, please read the FAQ about how to help, because if you don't, we might not see your contributions or patches or suggestions.

This has been a public service announcement. You can go back to your hot grits now.

Are you kidding man ? Ever heard of a little somethin called SlashCode ? Gee ... it's popular as hell, im sure they expected somethin like this .. - Mleko

Pertinant links:

Here, at Server51.net, is some info on SLASH.

-and-

This is the place you really want to go. Slashcode.com. Here, you'll find bug reports, feature requests, and the latest source (and a few trolls...just like home :-).

Also be sure to look through the mailing list archives... (at Server51, I believe)...

Here's my copy of DeCSS. Where's yours?

• Q1. How well in your opinion does slashdot rate as a study of usability and site design?
  Q2. What are the areas that need attention?
  
  I ask this because the code for the slashdot site, (slashcode) is open sourced and many (new) developers use slashdot as a guide for developing their own sites.

• First - If you don't like the way Slashdot does something, do it yourself. This is one of the foremost principles of OSS. Complete customizability. Slash code is available. Go get it and make your own damn site that doesn't have anything for anyone to complain about.
• Remember, if you don't like the way Hemos spells or whatever, IT'S NOT YOUR SITE! No matter how much money they came into, or how "PROFESSIONAL" you expect this site to be, it doesn't have to. It's THEIR site, they can do whatever the hell they want to with it. If they want to make it a military site for a day with embedded midi files and candy cane coloring and animated oompa loompas, THEY CAN. The site belongs to them. People make mistakes, I like the fact that I can come to a site that isn't so refined it can't own up to any of them. Some of us are endeared by the 'not-so-professional' touch they impress upon us.
• For those of you bitching about how the rant should have been placed elsewhere, or anywhere but where it was, I can't argue with you. Maybe that wasn't the best place for it. HOWEVER, you obviously didn't notice Rob's warning:
  
  If you don't care, just skip below and start reading comments.
  
  That should have been just enough to shut the lot of you up, yet it still wasn't. Oh well, some people have nothing better to do than bitch. I know I'm not setting a shining example, but I'm tired of having to wade through the "anti-Slashdot" crap attached to every fucking article. Get over yourselves. If you don't like it, leave, or do it yourself.
  
  Not even worth two cents,
  Later...
  
  

That's it exactly. While I too would have loved to see that last question answered, he's not the person to be answering that question. Maybe Gore's head PR person.

This guys a webmaster!! Where's all the questions about how he's backending the thing, or the equipment, or the in-house code to manage all the logs and stats and test performance. That's what I wanted to hear about. Give me something that I can relate to.

And why, oh why, aren't they running Slash??? I can just imagine the "first post" posts they'd have on their site :)

Now the Everything engine is very flexible, and Slash lets you get a lot done, there's really nothing out there like Zope for Perl.

At the risk of a shameless plug, let me just say that that's why i started Jellybean.

--

[This reply is to a thread that will probably have been moderated down to -1, to it's rightful place, soon enough]

I'm guessing you've already heard that slash has already been released publically (http://www.slashcode.com), but I'm guessing that the early hours of the morning give you time to reflect on memories of the past when you were locked away in a cage, and the only thing you were able to complain about was how a major news website was part of an anti-christ movement only because their engine was not fully open-sourced. Do you happen to post similar contributions on abcnews.com about the news anchors because their web site administrators haven't felt like it?

As for the issue at hand, evil evil evil corporate America. I can't stress anything more then not losing focus of the realities that face us. Support the open-source movement whenever you can, and as strongly as you can. We may very well be defeated in the battle we are already losing, without commitment from the existing supportees, and new.. erm.. participants. Yes.

... I'll stop here, before it gets moderated down as redundant, or having made no sense at all :P
*sleep*

I'm curious as to why they are advertising it as Slashcode.com when Slashcode.org works too, and fits a little better into the Open Source idea (being a .org).

Just a brief observation.

(Slashcode.net works too)