Slashdot Mirror
Slash v0.9 Released
The one thing that you'll notice missing is some of the Slashboxes. We've decided to only include Slashboxes that use the standard RDF format for backend information. This ought to be plenty of Slashboxes to get anyone started. The reason we decided to do this is that most of the remaining sites use backends that we had to ask for permission to use. You'll have to ask the same permission from the appropriate Webmasters.
This project has consumed countless hours on the parts of CowboyNeal and Patrick, and a to a lesser extent, me. We're all really excited to finally have a release ready to go, and to finally have a CVS server ready to help accelerate and coordinate future development. There's a lot of work left to do in this codebase, so if you're feeling spunky, feel free to send diffs.
Some notable features
- Many tables are cached locally in Apache to reduce SQL calls
- Mass moderation
- Customizable homepage
- Skinable look and feel by the sysadmin
- A plethora of default Slashboxes to get you started
- Highly configurable sections, including Look & Feel, and extension tables for extra fields (like the ISBN code fields we use in the authors table for example)
- Note passing system for authors in submissions
- Much of the site is remotely administratable with complicated but efficient Webforms.
TODO & BUGS
There are lots of both. Smoother installation. Preview bugs. Assorted troll protection bugs. Lots of new ideas to experiment with in the moderation system. A few security problems. Lots of interesting ways to make parts of the site more flexible for other users. Instant Messaging. Assorted advancements for the backend to help make distributed content management easier. Distributed/Load Balanced SQL. Cached Comments to reduce SQL. And much much more.
Slash's license ought to be edited to enforce the real conditions for use, which of course accurately reflects the fact it's not compatible with the GPL.
I hope Rob will now scrap this code and move to a java servlet/java 1.2 client codebase.
Anyone can paint by the numbers, but it takes an artist to create something. Of course, creating a destructive force is not much of a creative act, it's more of a force of nature (or a force of thermodynamics).
Here's the subscribe page: http://lists.slashdot.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi
What problem?
Well, this comment deserves to be rated up to at least 10...
Thanks for explaining the difficulty of a release process to all the whiners. So that they can officially be marked as trolls in future threads.
I'll lay off of you now, Rob.
Upcoming articles Troll talk
How long before we see a SlashDot style site with more traditional news? Or even the top 1 or 2 daily stories covered on SlashDot to avoid the need for those pesky "regular" news sites?
I have retired from making grits comments. I was disappointed in the quality of trolling in general and wanted to disassociate myself from them. I may unretire in the future, however.
The original Grits Boy.
If you didn't read what he wrote, he said that there was CVS access now. No point in waiting for releases.
thank you! chide_molesta@hotmail.com
I'm hemos, aka Jeff Bates. I help run this site, along with Rob Malda. I handle books, and generally posting stories.
And don't forget nanotech. You wouldn't be the Hemos you are today without nanotech.
I guess I'll have to port it to PHP. When will people start seeing that PERL is old, slow and generally sucks?
You really weren't ready to put a release out yet were you? Yet you bowed to the pressure of the nitwits that post here and put it out anyway. You folded like a cheap TV tray. Take a cue from Linus, "you'll get it when it's ready."
Annonymous
BTW, thanks for all the great work. And don't forget that the above is dripping in sarcasam.
Hmm... but when will X Free 4.0 be released?
Gnome and KDE 2.0?
With an inability to recognize humor like that, I'm sure you're just a blast at parties.
I can't quite figure out what language this is...
Check out this URL for a PHP version of Slash:
PHP Slash
Writing valid HTML isn't that hard, so what about trying to do so? :-)
--
Hugo
Just imagine it.
Funny, now we are "whiners" because we expect them to be not hypocritical.
Practice what you preach. Without us "Whiners" the source code would never had been updated. We need to keep vigilant.
How is it hypocritical to demand source code from a site which spends 100% of their time pointing out the "advantages" of open source and cursing those that do not see their point of view?
What does this have to do with me releasing MY source? I don't believe in open source, but I DO ask that people practice what they preach.
The source code would NEVER had been "ready" if we hadn't asked for it.
Without us "whiners" the updated code would never had been released.
I'm not sure what your particular problem was, but when I visited the link, I was presented with a nice directory with a README and a tarball.
Perhaps they divined it from reading the source? :)
Natalie Portman turning to stone?
Linus Torvalds becoming president of the world?
Nitrozac contracting a terminal illness?
See, we've still got a ways to go before we have a perfect world.
yeah, /....
actually, by definition, skriptkidz don't find the holes, they just use the blackbox skr1ptz that someone else has written.
Then ever 1337 kid out there starts resetting your password five times a day...
Ugly sucker, too. There's a Coelacanth webpage here.
They sat on the code for months (years?); there was ample reason to doubt this would ever change. And once code is "ready" (IMHO this never really happens), what's the point of releasing it?
http://www.clarence.com/contents/tecnologia/specia li/000103decss/ you want it you got it go here
But what exactly _is_ slash v0.9, I mean, I think of slashdot as "just" a web site... thanks! icetweb@SPAMhotmail.com
Yes, thank you.
No thank you to all the trolls demanding slashdot code.
Thank you to all those with patience, understanding, and good attitudes.
It aint beta if it works in production. I'd guess most of slashdot's problems were due to high load and limited distributed servers and availability.
Since I have the code now, I can determine if this statement is close to true.
What do you have against mod_perl?
Hi. My name is Jeff Robinson, and I run BigCheese.com (currently in development), soon to be the Internet's only cheese-oriented vertical portal. We will provide a complete range of cheese-related e-solutions, from information on caring for your milk-producing livestock to comprehensive cheese production equipment e-leasing plans to reviews of the latest and greatest varieties of cheese.
:)
I, personally, must say that I am very happy to see that Mr. CmdrTaco has released v0.9 of the source to Slashdot. This is a wonderful showing of solidarity with BigCheese.com: one of our guiding principles is to run our business in a community-friendly, open source oriented fashion. Heck, we'll even be using Linux servers. The sort of community-minded spirit this demonstrates on the part of Mr. CmdrTaco and company inspires me to conduct my business with just as much regard for the average guy.
Just think of it this way: you'll never have to worry about copyright lawsuits from dairy farmers.
Jeff Robinson
President & CEO, BigCheese.com
I'm very, very happy to see this. I've been wanting to look at the latest code for a while now.
And now... [FLAME ON] Can all those stupid goddamn trolls who can't be bothered writing their own code stop WHINING and just SHUT UP! I'm sick of seeing your BULLSHIT in every goddamn article, so either download the code (which I somehow doubt most of you will do) or choke on your own HYPOCRISY, but either way SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! [FLAME OFF]
Thank you.
No, it doesn't.
What the NNTP idea lacks is the idea of dynamic content. NNTP is about sending messages when they are available and storing them in a news spool. Slashdot sends the latest version of a post when you want to read it, with the latest moderation details.
Or would you have the slashdot server (or however uses such a feature) send out multiple copies of each post, and cancel messages for any copies of that post that had already been sent?
And Cori Nadine will move into my bedroom. The world can't be complete until that happens. Honest. It's one of Nostradamus' little known predictions.
Infinitely? I'd contend that mod-perl is just as capable (as in features and performance), coupled with one of many, many perl modules on cpan.
However, I would also say that it's mostly subjective. You can use python[zope], perl[mod_perl], php4, or vbscript and still achieve very similar results (give or take a little extra development depending on your objective).
So, I guess you run bob-ix, the Unix-like OS that you wrote on the weekends and in your spare time?
I have another request for CT:
Could you please, PLEASE put in some censor code to toss any post that contains the letter 'e', the number 8, or any sort of adjective? These might have been funny the first time around, but now I am well and truly FUCKING SICK of seeing this crap in every publication using the Roman alphabet.
Thank you.
You label yourselves, I'm afraid...
I have yet another request for CT:
Could you please put in some censor code in to toss any post containing the letter 'm', too? It used to be funny, but it's really getting old.
Thank you.
Actually, don't just think employees, think anyone who is bored and has lots of spare time on their hands...
And my apologies for our behavior.
"My" apologies for "our" behaviour?
Do you have a frog in your pocket or something?
GPL CSS, doh.. not done...
MPAA suiing everyone in its sights...
For a while, I had the impression that you were a bunch of morons for not releasing the Slashdot source while at the same time forcefully advocating all kinds of open source projects.
Thank you for proving me wrong! I'm sure this will be a handsome reward (pun intended) for the whole community of Nerds.
Nah... you shouldn't forget your password. Only low-life users forget their passwords :-)
Cheers,
Anonymous CowDung (Too lazy to log in)
Oh I forgot... brute-forcing MD5 hashes is good punishment if you forget it
Damn, I hate replying to myself
Cheers,
Anomymous CowDung (Still too lazy to log in)
Time to get off the "Free Slash !" troll-wagon.
Now it is time to fight for a new goal:
Upgrade Slashdot to handle the load !
Finally, Slashdot is practicing what it preaches!
Let this be a lesson for the MPAA - we WILL overcome!
That's bullshit.
*now* I know why they released it :-)
The passwords are all "change". As that implies, you should change it. It's clear text, so simply change it via the database.
Um.. you mean my password is in CLEAR TEXT?!?! Why not hash it with MD5? Sounds much safer to me.
Just IMHO,
Anonymous CowDung (too lazy to log in)
Now THIS is a funny troll.
Allowing unpublished changes is a necessary evil, for privacy reasons. But there's still the fundamental inequity that they're getting our work and we're not getting theirs, all to subsidize more proprietary software the world would be better off without.
Futurama will get funny.
You were being quite sensible up to this point.
Nick.
And for those that still don't get it: I download a piece of code and I know some cool ways to enhance it. So I code some changes and, community-minded as I am, I want to let everybody else use it too. So then I try to release the code for everybody to use and I include a file saying who made it and what I added. But nope, this is simply totally forbidden: I need to include all kinds of crap about forcing everybody to submit their changes to the opensource community when redistributing and more of that crap.
I could ofcourse quote mr. Franklin again but I won't, everybody is too much of a hypocrite to ever understand it anyway.
So I guess I'll just have to obfuscate the code a bit and release it to the public domain anyway. The bottomline is simple: I am a free man, if you won't give me my freedom, I will take it myself.
As for Mozilla being "too early", I can't hypothesize a course of events that would have brought Mozilla to a more advanced state right now than it's already in. It took a long time because they started with crap, and fixing it quickly took the kind of massive effort Netscape couldn't afford themselves.
The answer for support is to feature an email address prominently that auto-responds with a FAQ and blackholes the mail. The FAQ explains that you're on your own and how to offer patches by email (for those without CVS commit priv), and the patch address bounces any mail that doesn't seem to contain a unified diff. I'll grant you this is more of a nuisance to set up than it ought to be.
If someone is too proud to let everyone find out some of their code is buggy, why would they even pretend to be part of the open source community? This is like cleaning before your maid arrives- if you don't want to rely on him, why bother?
Excellent points!
While ESR said "release early, release often" I also seem to remember something about having something together enough to release in the first place.
I have used the Slash 0.3 code for a couple of sites and it was a royal pain, especially to customize. I've gotten several comments about "have you seen that site, they just ripped of slashdot!" To which I have to explain about open source, and if they looked they would see several points of credit and links to slashdot on the site.
I even consider it a point of admiration to use the Slash. I think the slash is a great concept and well done.
Now that I am done fawning over Slash, what about support? We are the open source people here. I know I am not the only one to use slash in the wild. Let's get some groups together to support it. It would not be very hard to do a couple of tweaks to Slash to use it for a good open forum for support.
We have servers, we have source, we have people, so let's get to it.
chris
chris@pugrud.net
---
Not anonymous, not a coward, just too lazy to create a login.
- Rob posts stories about things other than Y, my pet topic.
- Rob supports evil Nazi moderators that mark down informative posts about the homosexual tendencies of many well known people.
- Rob prevents trolls from posting after several trolls from the same IP in a short time.
I say riot, my brothers and sister, riot! Leave this poor excuse for a communications medium and stick it to The Man (of whose conspiracy Rob has most assuredly become a part of). That will teach them to respect you. I hereby reinstate the boycott, but extend the duration for a week!That's right, from Friday, January 28 @ 12:00PM EST to Friday, February 4, @ 12:00PM EST no one shall use Slashdot. Rob shall quiver at our might! Viva la revolucion! Viva la independencia!
Note: The needs of the revolution may dictate that we extend the boycott, perhaps indefinitely. Please do not return to Slashdot unless you receive a specially encoded email informing you that the boycott has succeeded. Such sacrifices are needed if we are to fix the evils of Slashdot!
"Flamebait"? That previous post was marked as "Flamebait"? I wish I knew what country the moderator in question came from and what "Flamebait" means in his culture.
jjohn, you kiss just like my dad!
>> we are using Linux, arent't we?
no, we are not. we are using OpenBSD and BeOS.
I seem to remember the version being waited on for so long was 0.4, and since, they've created 5 versions before the source was released again.
I have mirrored as well.... Everything you need all in one place.
ftp://cnhtech.com/pub/slashstuff
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
I ordinarily do not respond to trolls, but I felt this was an important issue to discuss.
The comments on Slashdot are no more GPL'd than text edited with GNU Emacs. Software products which use source code from Slashdot and that are distributed must be distributed under a GPL compatible license. Data processed by Slashdot (such as articles and posts) do not constitute derivative works, because the posts/articles are not code, are not modifying the Slash code, and are certainly not redistributing modified versions of Slash.
Security through obscurity is a very sound principle. It's just that most peeps don't get the fact that when you drop a bit of code onto somebodies computer, it's no longer obscure. I can make a trivial security system and as long as you can only see and feel the thick seeming walls, the strong appearing lock, the heavy bolts, it's pretty secure even it was designed and implemented by an idiot. But if I let you come in and examine it, then I'm phucked.
I'm a troll, but my gripe was legitimate. For a while it seemed like the slashdot crew was full of shit. However, they definitely put their money where their mouths are and I can say that I myself downloaded their code within 6 seconds of the announcement (forgoing first post to do so). So don't give me that crap. Some of us trolls care about the community and sometimes even write decent code. Don't label us :-).
I look with some amusement at the comments congratulating the /. 'ers for DOING EXACTLY WHAT THEY SAID THEY WERE GOING TO DO. For all you sniveling bitchy worms that have been flaming the whole crew about this for the last while I suggest that at NO time did the slashdotters deserve the heap o' stink you selfishly foisted onto them....just because they didn't feel like the code was ready when YOU wanted it, didn't mean that they were going to do anything other than what they promised- make the code readable and realease it when they felt it was ready....I hope whatever paybacks there are in this universe are dealt out accordingly to the crybabies who must have made life VERY difficult in what SHOULD have been a wonderful year for these fine folks.
And you'll find just as many Perl programmers that say the exact same thing about Python; being "too restrictive, and Perl supports all the same things AFAIK". Let's face it, Perl and Python are (usually) mutually exclusive. :)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
In NNTP, you would always be reading at -1, unless you have spam filters set up, just like any other news group.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Keep up the good work and remember to Use the source, Luke. Release early and release OFTEN.
The more you know, the less you understand.
isn't it funny that other folks were using the Slash code before it was released today?
:^)
CLUE STICK: Slash has been "out there" for a while (that's what the "code" link is, surprisingly enough) it's just that Slash 0.9 is now released. For some reason, the damn trolls know how to write, just not how to read.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Gnus, an emacs newsreader, already does pseudo-nntp access to slashdot, including letting you set your threshold and everything.
(granted, it's not real nntp, you can't use an arbitrary newsreader, but since gnus is my newsreader...)
I'm going to make you my Junkyard whore, Pudge.
Just you wait...
Coelacanth. It's a fish thought to be exinct for thousands of years. Coelacanth?
Checkout http://phplib.netuse.de
or
http://glug.goshen.edu for an example site
(sooo much nicer in PHP)
-jay
Oh, real mature.
What is best? Whatever you like. For something like Slashdot, I think Perl is the best choice, because it has great scalability and speed and flexibility, and it runs everywhere. PHP might be fine for you; I don't like it because I can't do as much with it, and because I know Perl well enough to do whatever I want with it. Simply put, I don't need PHP.
The only bad thing about Perl is one of its primary virtues: it lets you write code in pretty much any style you want. What does that mean? It means that code like Slash, which is hack upon hack upon hack over years, can get kinda ugly (although it is much better than I thought it would be, judging from what some people had told me). I hope we can clean it up and make it better. That would be a Good Thing.
Well, it is not big secret. There has been a lot of work on this in recent weeks, and Patrick did a hell of a lot of work over the weekend, and as expected right before a release, we did a lot of work on Tuesday, all day and into the night. Sweat and tears and Perl and MySQL.
You are incorrect. The code is under the GPL. There is no longer a requirement for the link back to Slashdot.
There is one. http://lists.slashdot.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi
This post was at 7:30 last night, and the story was posted this morning. How did that happen?
..and thanks.
Not in the long term. Think ex-employees, for instance.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Will someone please buy these guys a programming book of some kind? Checking return values? Using Perl's quoting operators? Avoiding namespace pollution? Hello? Anyone home? Gah!
I developed a Slashdot-like system from scratch, since I needed Hebrew support (which is not easy, considering the mess current browsers make out of Hebrew web pages). I used PHP, and I'm very satisfied. While I do not have any real experience with Perl, I'd vote for PHP.
You can find the site at http://www.haayal.co.il (meaningless if you don't read Hebrew).
- Tal Cohen
Thank you Rob and crew. Now can we find something else to whine about? :)
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
<Downloads source>
Yeeek! Welcome to the Jungle, baby!
Is the next release to be called Axl?
... and today's pet project has
("Check it once, post it twice.
Question the source?
That wouldn't be nice.")
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
...and Pater and the rest of the gang. I think you've just defused virtually all of the criticism headed your way as of late...
I'm downloading the code now, and you can expect diffs from me. And it's time for the requisite gripe: "You coulda used the artistic license..."
I've got a weblog going written in Java (Servlets) running at Suckage.com.
The source code is GPL and is available at Sourceforge at this address.
The first code release is *VERY* rough but it's getting there.
--hunter
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
This post was at 7:30 last night, and the story was posted this morning. How did that happen?
There appear to be several undocumented features that the trolls have the ability to access. This includes, but is not limited to, viewing of articles before posting on the main page, and a message board that seems entirely devoted to troll messages.
(conspiracy theory)This suggests that there is at least one troll on Slashdot staff who set up the message board and leaked undocumented feature information.(/conspiracy theory). Or it's possible that the slashdot staff hoped in vain that a message board for trolls would cut down on the number of other troll posts.
I guess my question is: how exactly does code for a website become dependent and integrated with the machine on which it is running? This is something that I've been wondering for a long time. If it's just a bunch of perl scripts and databases, just change paths to programs/files and database/table names. Or is that the problem? There are so many of those things that you have to change, and they're scattered all over the place. Or is it something else that I don't understand?
"I'd like to live in theory, because everything works in theory, in theory." - Can't remember who said this.
So... now that we have the code - anyone want to help me port Slash to Win 2000/ASP's/SQL Server? :)
I don't know... I think I'm joking!
Whoops! Try this:
http://phplib.netuse.de/download
It's like the Selikamp! What once was lost, now is found!
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
I did think of the abuse angle, but thought it wasn't a problem assuming that meta-moderation has no automatic effect upon the system (about which I could be terribly wrong).
As I understand it, there are many more meta-moderators at one time than there are moderators. My guess is that pretty much every moderation gets meta-moderated quite a number of times. I imagine that statistically there are many more good meta-moderators than bad/rogue meta-moderators. The each good meta-moderator's work would have the same 'extra' weight as any bad meta-moderator under the proposed scheme, so a bad bit of meta-moderation would quickly get counteracted.
I assume that fair and unfair is each worth one meta-moderation point, and all meta-moderations of a moderation are added together to get the meta score, therefore a whole group of moderators with the same opinion of a comment would only get a negative effect from the system if the majority of meta-moderators that saw that moderation thought that moderation was unfair.
I don't think meta moderation works that way. I think that moderation adds the points instantly, so if four people give a comment from a logged in user Interesting, it gets a total score of five right away. These moderations will soon get meta moderated. If a particular moderation gets an unfair, I think that moderator loses some karma, which in turn reduces their likelyhood of getting to moderate again.
Or is it just that the /. administrators get a list of users who have receive a lot of unfair meta moderations, and then decide whether any of those users need to be banned from moderating? Can anyone explain? I would read the source, but 'learn PERL' is quite a way down my todo list.
Just two days ago I posted an off-topic flame about how Rob & Co. aren't living the same OpenEverything ethic they advocate. Now, I don't know whether to feel ashamed or vindicated.
I guess I'll be less judgemental in the future.
Maybe they were just so rushed to put out the new release under the new license that they didn't update that line of the page. At any rate, it's a request now instead of a requirement. Next whine, please.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
I was developing a web-based forum system with an NNTP backend... htpp://newwws.linuxbox.com/
Maybe Slashdot isn't run by a group of hypocrites like I have said in the past. It's good to see them cacthing up with reality. The CVS server is also an extra bonus. Hopefully, we won't have to have "Free the Slash Source" campaigns anymore.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
I just find PHP infinitely easier to develop with than Perl. Besides, PHP was built for web pages, not just practical extraction and reporting. ;-)
Maybe I am just unlucky, but I see this kind of duplicate almost every day.
Hey, I've thought this exact same thing as you. However, I just thought of a potential for abuse. If someone were to purposefully do a bad meta-moderation (ie., the post in question truly was "insightful", the moderation applied was "insightful", but the meta moderator voted "unfair") then in one stroke that meta moderator could foul up a number of moderators' otherwise very proper sensibilities. With the current system, the potential for this abuse is a bit better limited.
I'm not sure how to deal with that scenario. Would it happen frequently enough that this would be a problem? Only the Slashdot crew really knows, I think. Suggestions?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Much like a newborn puppy...
> The whole problem here is that someone - a metagod (M[infinity]) - would have to run the meta-Slashdot.
Around these parts, that guy's name is "root"...
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Does this mean that someone could figure out how the system copes with the intricate details of Moderation and Meta Moderation, how it assigns karma points AND, most importantly, who gets to moderate? I realise that the code is released, but before anyonw flames me, CmdrTaco, is the code you released the exact same code that /. is running on now? It just occurs to me that some troll could figure out a way to get on the fast track to moderation...
http://www.jonmasters.org/
That said, I think that requiring people that use the code to link back to Slashdot is perfectly acceptable.
-Nathan Whitehead
because it's something that simply can't be said enough.
You guy's rock!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Why do I only notice after I've posted? (yes I do preview).
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
However, I would also say that it's mostly subjective. You can use python[zope], perl[mod_perl], php4, or vbscript and still achieve very similar results (give or take a little extra development depending on your objective).
All of the above are quite capable systems, though you left out zend. I mention it only because it allows you to compile your scripts into code and can execute from 10 to 700% faster. Very cool tech.
Lowmag.net
Well, yes he did actually, since Zend is incorporated into PHP4
PHP4 works as a module, zend is a server.
Lowmag.net
... I downloaded 0.3pre just yesterday and was going finishing up the install today, when I read SlashDot, and lo and behold... 0.9 is out!!!!
To Rob and all the persons involved, Thanks for the hard work!!!
Congratulations Rob, Hemos, Nate and the rest of the gang... The code is now everyone's, but the perspective, as always, is all yours.
And that's what Slashdot means to me.
Yeah, but what if a comment is only slightly Interesting? (Sort of like this one!) Say it doesn't deserve a 5, but it does deserve a 3. Who you gonna call?
For those that don't believe in God, this is the ultimate proof that a miracle can happen
I won'd use it directly myself but thanks
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
'Limo.... you are my hero
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
...dunno, but that SmokeMoreCrack call has got to be addi^H^H^H^Hrecursive.
+&x
slashd, line 182, sub fpsBeDamned
;)
#################################
# I suppose I'll let the secret out: for a few months, before the moderation
# system came into being, this little function faked "First Posts" and then
# deleted them when a real comment came along. Worked pretty well, and nobody
# figured it out. I disabled it when the moderation came online feeling that
# it was a cleaner solution. -CT
Cool hack... Left me ROFL
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
At this point, the moderation code has been released into the wild, and any attempts to patent will be thwarted by "prior art". It'll be up to us to make sure that the patent office knows about it, though.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
Of course, no-one cares about slashcode anymore do they, it's just a hack made by someone who doesn't care anymore because they now have lots of money.
:o) - Now we can do things properly, just like it should be, and I look forward to it developing into a true opensource project just like people have been wanting since /. began! :o)
Cynics
Congrats CmdrTaco for getting it right! It looks like you have delivered exactly what you promised!
:o)
Learning Perl is easy and worthwile.
All you have to do is go to your local bookstore and purchase "Programming Perl", just read the book and you'll know Perl.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Sweet, thanks.
"Please don't sigh like that, maam"
So um, how about a mailing list for slash users? Then people can get help without bothering the big Taco or anyone else, and it can be a place to talk about new/desired features and stuff. Anyone?
"Please don't sigh like that, maam"
I think the original poster was being sarcastic, and mocking the many people who really have been saying things like that.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
... is a book which avoids using the letter "e" throughout. Dunno if it has "8" in it, but I imagine it does have adjectives.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Consider that Allaire is close to release CF for Linux. 8-)
I've been beta testing ColdFusion 4.5 for Linux (beta) on a non-production box, on and off for a few months now, and it works GREAT.
The only snag was that we couldn't keep our small databases in Access(mdb) format (yea.. I know.. I was planning on moving them over to SQL soon anyway).
When will webedge.slashdot.org be available?
Corey
Do anal-retentive people hyphenate 'anal retentive'?
It's wonderful that the Slash code can be released, but isn't it interesting that Andover.net, with /. as one of its main properties, has already gone public whilst running beta software? I wonder what'll happen when Slash 1.0 is in use. Secondary offering anyone?
Walt
This link asked for a userid and password.
I have noticed this too. It appears that the highest level posts get sorted according to "Highest score first", and the other level (replies to posts, replies to replies to posts, etc) get sorted according to time posted. The only reasonable reason for this I can see is that it creates too much overhead to do sort messages recursively. Either that or its a bug. :)
>>>>>>>> Kvort
-Don't mind me, I'm personality-deficient and mentally-impaired.
and free transmeta chips for all!!!!!!!!!!!!
wheeee!!!!!
Well, yes he did actually, since Zend is incorporated into PHP4.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I built the dtheatre.com code with Killbot up there and I was a firm believer in Perl some one would ask me to check the time I would make a perl script to do it.. but now I have converted all the way to PHP3 (PHP.NET) I still use perl for NT based sites and for some basic scripts like say a news headline grabber etc and it has far better regular expressions than anyone else.. but for everything else there's PHP3
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
somebody out there has got to be building one.. We got pretty close but we didn't need all the features for ours at dtheatre.com but there are a lot of people building little slash clones everywhere..
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
The only guy who needs the source is the guy wants to fix it.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
left undone?
/. code years earlier and building a site as opposed to leeching submit queues like a lazy bum and use up /.'s bandwidth in a way similar to the bug that downed AT&T's entire phone network years earlier. Not a crack, an actual bug which proved centralization where it's not needed is dangerous. Course I can name countless non-technological examples of such.
Something like coding something useful. Like taking the
Rares
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Bad idea. People could then delete anything that started dragging their karma down. It'd be better if people just thought before they posted. Or they'd have to figure out how to handle the moderation that was done to the comment after it's deleted.
Unless you had a /. enabled newsreader that could process the X-Slashdot headers.
/. (flat, nested, etc). It would also parse the moderations on the articles so it could filter articles based on your preferences.
/. comments server would have to allow the clients to modify the moderation fields in real time. Which would mean the client would have to authenticate /. member logins, and then only provide moderator access to users at the same time the regualr /. interface does, keep track of points left, etc.
/. servers and operators.
/. client for the Palm Pilot...
/. on a Palm with a web browser now, but the point is you could probably code a lightweight /. client for just about ever platform.)
It could provide message threading display options the same as on
You could do moderation from within the newsreader, but the
On the downside, this is going to require some knowledge/changes/co-operation from the
On the upside, imagine a
(yes, I know, you can read
There is a reason to be wary of potential holes in the Slash source because so many changes have been done without peer review.
This isn't a negative thing with open source - it's a negative thing with closed source development.
Had incremental changes to the Slash source been posted, and a distinction between "stable" and "development" version been made, then the risc would be much smaller, since you's have lots of people looking over the code before it would be used for production sites.
Right!
(I'm no expert, so correct me if I'm wrong) but the main purpose of Slashdot is not to develop the Slash code for all the geeks out there, but rather to be a good news site for geeks (and maybe others too)... right?
At least I see it this way:
Giving the Slash code away too is just a bonus, so people should stop bitching about delayed releases and all that crap!
Ner lbh sebz gur HFN? Gura lbh'ir whfg ivbyngrq gur QZPN!
Now you release the latest code?!? Now?!? I finally got the damn pre0.3 to work!!!
:) Actually, thank you very much for releasing this as I have been looking forward to getting a hold of a more recent version of the code. And more importantly, thank you for the additional support towards the code, such as the Slashcode site and CVS tree. :) I really appreciate it.
Just kidding (well, not about getting pre0.3 to work).
Deosyne
thanks for your work and subsequent GPL'ing of the same. Big respect to thee clan of slashdot.
There's probably a way to do this in Python, but I don't know what it is.
Well, that's the first way I thought of to do this, and probably the simplest, although it's not quite as simple as Perl's ability to name variables using other variables :) From what I know the latest version of Python (v1.5.2) has all the same regular expressions as found in Perl v5, but they certainly aren't as easy to use as in Python. Still, your code got the thinking, and I might go back and practice my Perl a bit more :)
I have to say that writing Perl is a lesson in frustration and mental torture, or at least I found it to be so before I gave up on it altogether :) Personally I far prefer Python which is a hell of a lot more readable, supports all the same things AFAIK (it's been a while since I touched Perl) - regular expressions, SQL, HTML etc. And there's far less $ and $$ around :)
Usually I don't like 10e9 messages all saying the same thing, but sometimes I think it serves a purpose. Having a ton of praise for the Slash release is entirely appropriate. So, good job, guys! I know what a pain it is to release customized, idiosyncratic, constantly evolving code. And Slash is larger than anything like that that I've tried to do that with. (setq slashdot-esteem (* slashdot-esteem 2))
Btw, if anybody wants to get involved with a project, click my homepage link. I need help.
Visit
I thought that was the strength of open source -- we are using Linux, arent't we?
This space left intentionally blank.
So, now the 'Slash' is out at version 0.9
What I'm wondering is when the 'http://' and the 'dot.org' parts get released?
Hey guys, mysql chokes big time on ORDER BY and GROUP BY statements. Sure they might be fine in other databases but mysql has a really hard time with them and it will lead to performance degredation. You should look into different ways to structure your SQL. Multiple selects, for instance, is much faster than one select with an ORDER BY and/or GROUP BY. Mysql flies on selects. Just a word of advice. Thanks for publishing the source, too :-)
.agrippa.
I want to flame taco still cause I'm still offended by the attitude that came out of the "interview" a couple of weeks back but it would be wrong to do so.
Congrats, You've come through and in a way which is a very good representation of how "most" OpenSource projects make their information available.
I'm very happy to see that this has been done. And I'm sure CmdrTaco and company will really appreciate the reduction of heat over the issue.
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
I have mirrored as well.... Everything you need all in one place.
ftp://cnhtech.com/pub/slashstuffs;l
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
I know. PHP has come a long way since when I started using it. I went with it mostly because I still find perl confusing, and because I like the structure of C++. Aside from that, cool! Hemos responded to my comment. That's almost as nifty as when he sent out ad rates personally. When will all the slashdot staff action figures hit electronics boutique :)
Ken Boucher.
-----
Want to reply? Don't know HTML? No problem.
No Zen is good zen
Cold Fusion is out for Linux, HP Solaris Been testing Linux servers all week. :-)
Nothing but slash.
Thank You Slash Dot . Org Crew!
Slash Rules
Opps, I just though of something, do you guys think you will be sued by Guns & Roses?
GPL none the less, this makes me feel awhole lot more comfortable with the code than the "other" license Rob put on it. Sorry Rob but that first license just sounded alittle to "if-y", but putting it under GPL was a really good thing.
Thanks SLASH
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
trolldot.org where you get moderated down for posting with your account. News articles are about Natalie Portman, trolls, hot grits and Don Knotts. It would be great as long as they don't try posting it all here too.
Of course I just added another 24 hours of wait time for this new website.
Still, I think it is a good thing that the source code is released. One less thing for AC's to whine about and might get some improvements too. Let's see if all you guys saying what you could do with the source are blowing smoke or not.
On the download page it says that a requirement for use is that you display a Slashdot logo and a link back to Slashdot, but it appears to be under the GPL which would seem to preclude the old BSD-ish obnoxious advertising clause. Which is it?
I seem to have run across a strange situation using redhat's Apache-1.3.9-8 rpm, mod_perl 1.21 and otherwise following exactly the instructions in the INSTALL file in the slash 0.9 tarball. Apache coredumps on the section. Excluding it at least allows Apache to start. Of course, Apache then proceeds to coredump when you try to access localhost:/ So do any of you brilliant people have any ideas? :)
I think it is patentable, and it should be patented by the Good Guys before some corporate asshole tries to become a manipulative uberjerk about it.
Yes, NNTP !
I *hate* web chat systems and web message board
systems - you're lucky to get me to use it for this post.
Give me NNTP and I'd read the "comments" far more often using a proper newsreader.
This feels dirty.
ok, for incoming posts strip any moderation line, and have:
X-Slashdot-User:
X-Slashdot-Pass:
X-Slashdot-Moderate: [message id] [moderation]
Of course its a kludge. You think it isnt already!?
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
NNTP comment retrieval, followed by NNTP comment posting...
:/
* Yarn fires up vim
* Yarn remembers exams, and postpones
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Of course its feasable, I'd not be trying it otherwise :)
I looked at the code page but I want to do it my own way, from scratch.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
There are so many of those things that you have to change, and they're scattered all over the place.
I haven't looked at the new slash release yet, but I've seen EXACTLY that problem before. The nice thing about perl is that it is easy to make little tweaks here and there and evolve a CGI rather organically. The bad thing is that doing that can make 'portable' code remarkably non-portable.
Of course, none of us ever give in to the temptation of the quick and dirty fix that can lead to this problem [GRYNNE]
I hear this as an often quoted failing of the GPL, the fact that anyone can take a GPL'ed project private and allow people to use it (sans binary access) without necessarily being required to release the source.
Why is this a bad thing?
This allows GPL'ed, tried and tested code to make its way into proprietary networks and architectures. If we required all modifications to GPL'ed projects to be re-released, regardless of how the project was to be used, that would totally destroy the ability of companies to make proprietary, customized modifications to GPL'ed software for internal use, which is, by far, one of the most appealing things about GPL.
On the Slash code page you mention "The only restriction is that you must put a Slashdot Logo and a link back to Slashdot on any site that uses our code. Beyond that, have a ball." I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but that is a violation of the GPL. Maybe you meant to alter the license so that users cannot do whatever they want with the code, as long as they release updates - that are distributed - back into the fold.
We gave Corel hell for it's GPL mistakes. Now it's time to see just how stupid even Slashdot can be. Is there something about the GPL that makes it too hard to understand? Is it freedom?
Joseph Elwell.
Honestly, can you really go from "it's too site-specific and ugly to release" to "here's slash v0.9" in a few days? I don't think so.
No, clearly the slash release was ready last week when we were all whining about it, but CmdrTaco decided it would be fun to see how many Slashdot regulars he could sucker into make asses of themselves in said whining first.
Consider me suckered. Egg on my face.
Thanks for the code, guys.
Karma was never something designed to be boasted about, and although it was fun to have a publically-visible high karma, I got an enormous backlash from little snots who decided that my high karma was a sign that I was simply out to gain karma in any way I possibly can. Read my user info for more information.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Now it's time for those of us (myself included) who have been whinging for months about this to put up or shut up...
Anyone have any feature ideas? (My fave so far: _cancel_ your own messages.. VERY TRICKY to manage those trees, but possible...)
Let the hacking begin!
Your Working Boy,
Case of a $#!@$#! firewall.
I just wanted to be sure that they saw it. (They did.) According to the response I got it is in a queue and should get tested today or tomorrow.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I for one appreciate your modifications and enthusiasm in sharing them, and if I had moderator points I'd even give ya one right now, but I gotta say, I think that in general it'd be better to put a diff file out on the web somewhere and post a link; no reason why the whole thing should take up space on Slashdot's hard drives, and no reason why it should use up bandwidth every time somebody views the page.
Yeah, just think: six months from now, every
weblog in the Universe will come equipped
with a Katz filter!
Well, under the code page there's an indication that this is feasible. You did read the links, didn't you?
-- Liquor up front, poker in the rear.
To CmdrTaco and the rest of the Slashdot crew, thanks for this gift to the Open Source community.
;-) ]
[Now, if your next version is PHP-based, I might end up using it myself
(Score: -1, Flamebait but Insightful)
Oh, wait, that's DeCSS, not Slash. I got confused.
Ah, the CCA will probably sue them anyway. Little things like actually doing something wrong don't bother them much.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"ChangeThisAfterInstall" (or something very similar)...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
As much as I respect their work, the guys at Slashdot have to eat, sleep, and post articles. They can't be coding round the clock.
Why not??? Then we should jail them and give them for only distraction the possibility to write / code, without having the possibility to post stories of course, this would take too much time for them to check the story and they probably would complain of having been jailed and other human rights stupidities.
NOTE to moderators: DON'T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
But is this an issue if we use Slashdot-controlled news servers ratehr than standard servers?
I mean, if we're getting comments from (for example) nntp.slashdot.org couldn't that still create it all on demand?
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Good. Now can we finally move on?
I mean really, it's true that it was kind of a contradiction that not releasing the source for the site that openly supports open source, but the hysteria and trolling around it was too much.
So, you've won. Slash is released. Time to move on to some other all-important issue to bitch and whine about at -1 on every thread. What will it be? Where will all the complainers focus their hostility now? LinuxOne? RedHat? George Lucas? Hot grits?
Lots of (negative) energy floating around out there now without a single purpose anymore. What an opportunity to re-direct all of than onto some new life/death cause!
Sheesh.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Sun will suddenly release Java under the GPL or BSD licensing schemes.
Intel will slash chip prices across the board to just above fabrication costs.
Music will become free for anyone to download and play. Movies likewise.
All governments will merge into one big global mega government and suddenly world peace will occur.
Futurama will get funny.
~~
"I am pouring hot gr1ts down Natolie Port-man's pertifi3d pa|\|ts!"
A lot of good your troll filter did there, huh?
Yeah, and when your exhasustive method starts blowing away perfectly legitamate posts because they make reference to the new RIT5 encoding method (or ATA13 drives or something) you'll feel really clever. There is no way you will institute a filter that will catch all trolls and only trolls. Even catching a few trolls and only trolls is a challenge. The best you can do is search for posts that repeat the same long string over and over again. This is the only troll catcher I can think of that isn't likely to start tossing good posts.
You *know* it's coming to ISPs. You *know* "personal slashdots" are coming...
:-)
Hmmm, with that many "slashdot's" around, wouldn't it be nice if they could all work together somehow? To create a meta-slashdot network? All user-logins are shared, moderation totals are shared. Popular slash sites can become slashboxes at other slash sites. Submissions can finally get moderated themselves, and moderation totals can go higher than 5 allowing for slash-search sites that return the most popular posts of the day, culled from all registered slash-sites...
I could go on....
Open source is great
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
I believe that deusx (the original poster of this thread) was saying that Slash is very specific to the Slashdot site. I haven't looked at this release yet, but Slash 0.3 was arguably very specific to Slashdot. Indeed, there were no configuration files in the 0.3 release that could be easily tailored to your site (and I doubt there are any in this release).
That isn't to say that it is impossible to configure Slashdot (or a Slash-based site), but the time involved is much greater. Add to that the fact that Slash, out of the box, was designed to run under mod_perl with mysql running the backend database management. I would assume that CmdrTaco, CowboyNeal, nate, and countless others edited and compiled much of the afformentioned software to work with Slash better. Slashdot runs as well as it does (I'm not being sarcastic) because the site admins have worked at it for so long. So, part of it is changing the locations of files, generating tables, etc. A lot of it is the actual implementation of the code so that it runs.
News Access for /. is a really good idea (Something I've been thinking about for a while, but don't have the experience or time to do). I'm glad someone else thought of it.
./ scores to a an Importance Ranking. If we translate the Slashdot Moderation score to the X-priority like this:
./ News based on Importance.
Netscape Newsreader uses 'X-priority' headers to rate the importance of a Message. This Priority is set by the sender when they send out a message via NNTP or Email. The Receiver can click a button on their buttonbar to sort the message by Priority.
'X-Priority' could be used to translate
X-Priority...........Slashdot Score
Lowest: 5...........-1
Low: 4...........0,1
Normal: ?...........2,3
High: 2...........4
Highest: 1...........5
.. Viola! You enable certain newsreaders to organize the
Sure, it's lacking in features (For example, it does not distuinguish '3, Insightful' from '3, Funny'), but it works on a basic level.
I don't have Mozilla up and running at work, but I assume it supports some sort of Priority. MSOE 5 doesn't use Priority headers for News (It has 'X-MSMail-Priority: High|Low' for email).
Whaddya think?
-= Stefan
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Of course, there would have to be meta-Slashdot moderators, because otherwise someone could set up a slashdot where they do nothing but moderate up their own posts. So that entire slashdot would have to be moderated down.
And if you get enough Karma on various slashdots, you could become a meta-Slashdot moderator, moderating other Slashdots up and down, but then of course there would have to be meta-meta-Slashdot moderators to control them. And if one of these meta-meta-Slashdot moderators says that to moderate a certain Slashdot down because its meta-moderation system is faulty is an unfair moderation, he's meta-meta-meta-moderating (M4). Whee.
The whole problem here is that someone - a metagod (M[infinity]) - would have to run the meta-Slashdot. And what if people don't like the way it's run? Does he have to be moderated by a metagod-moderator (M[infinity + 1])?
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
and we all live unhappy in utopia forever and ever ...
This came as a surpirse to me because 6 months back I went looking for a more updated version then pre0.3. I went to filez.com (when it was still up) and found a bunch of sites (like ftp.cdrom.com) that had versions of slash code at 1.3. I even have it lying around on my HD still. Does anyone know if this is Slashdot.org code? Or someone elses similarly named code for another program?
If you want a copy, email me (nicksworld@netscape.net), I'll send it to you as quickly as I can.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
The cost of eyeballs just went up--thanks, guys!
I have two comments on this. First, I have long insisted that any closed source product that is not at least as good than an open source alternative is defective. Second, you are right in your comment. Slashdot has set the standard. And since they are using the GPL, other sites that want to use the code will have to GPL modifications. It is just possible that this will lead to improvements. As much as I respect their work, the guys at Slashdot have to eat, sleep, and post articles. They can't be coding round the clock.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Proposed signe for Bruce Perens to wave
'Look at the Gimp' complete with a logo of the Gimp.
'I love you, Hemos!'
'Does anyone have a tubesock I can borrow?'
'Me, you, and ide.c. Lets get it on!'
.sig: Now legally binding!
Set up filter expressions like these:
[Gg]*[Rr]*[iI1]*[Tt+]*[Ss5]
[Nn]*[Aa4]*[Tt+]*[Aa40Oo]*[Ll1]*[eE3]
[Pp]*[Oo0]*[Rr]*[Tt+]*[Mm]*[Aa4]*[Nn]
[Pp]*[eE3]*[Tt+]*[Rr]*[iI1]*[Ff]*[iI1]*[eE3]*[Dd]
[Pp]*[Aa4]*[Nn]*[Tt+]*[Ss5]
Score a certain amount for each of them, and toss out posts above a specified score.
-- The Brory Stool Co.: We accidentally the best stools from behind seven proxies, since 2009.
About time. I was getting really tired of wasting moderator points in moderating down the "Rob is a hypocrite because he won't release Slash." Trolls. I guess those folks will have find something else to bitch about. Or else return to making obtuse comments about grits...
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
While I agree about the stupid trolls...I
just have 2 points about DOS and Script Kiddies.
A) (As others have said) If there are holes, they
will be found and fixed. Not a big deal. An
activly exploited hole can only survive for so
long.
B) Slashdot becomes saturated and stops responding
for at least an hour a day or so anyway.
The place is so popular that reading it
amounts to a DoS attack. What more could a
malicous attacker do? how much MORE slow could
you make it (try accessing it around 1 pm (EST))
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Seriously, though, it happened to me several times lately that I get posts with high scores displayed underneath a couple of "Score 2" posts. Yes, I reloaded the page, stating explicitely that I want "Highest scores first". No, it wasn't a "4" response to a "2" article.
Least but not least, I want to express my outmost joy about having the possibility to read /. and seeing it developed. I think /. i a precursor of future shape of Usenet-like forums: self-moderated discussions with a configurable look&feel.
Regards,
January
I used Cold Fusion for years on the unmentionable operating system and it is easy to pick up and use. Unfortunately, it lacks the ability to easily encapsulate and abstract and encourages the use of global data; complex applications can quickly become festering pits of misery.
The perceived simplicity of the "language" also encourages people with poor programming skills to use it for everything. I once met a guy who wrote 2000 lines of Cold Fusion to parse text files. I was horrified. One of the other developers rewrote the code in about 100 lines of Perl.
Honestly, I never want to go back to writing Cold Fusion. While it is similar to Perl in that you can write quick and dirty web apps with it, Perl has the ability to let you go beyond the quick and dirty.
Troy Denkinger
TD
Another mirror here: http://www.y2brand.com/slash/
There are lots of ways to use Perl effectively to build and maintain sites. I used modules and mop_perl for my Aliens, Aliens, Aliens site. Most of the functionality comes from a single module which is used by various scripts which access particular tables.
However, if I had to build it again, I would have gone with HTML::Mason, which is a very powerful embedded perl system, like PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP, Zope, etc. It is open source and very nice if you already know Perl. If you don't, wouldn't Cold Fusion be the easiest embedded HTML language to use? Consider that Allaire is close to release CF for Linux. 8-)
In the end, any system which helps you the programmer separate form from functionality is the tool to use. The days of hard coding perl scripts to generate HTML are over, I hope.
just hope there arent any holes for script kiddies to find and DoS
A very good point. The trolls and first posters are annoying enough, but bringing the site down every five minutes would be very easy if there are holes in the code. Is this something that was considered before the code was released? I know security through obscurity is not generally thought of as security at all, but this would only make it easier for the arseholes of this world to wreak havoc.
Like it or not, Slashdot is now a relatively well recognised place, and in general our opinions make themselves felt. What would happen if it was brought down?
"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
"Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
Here is the letter that I sent to do my part...
/g; # Stupid fix for long lines
/g;
/g;
What does this do?
1. I fixed the bug which meant that if you typed , previewed, then posted your post did not match your preview. (I needed to add a new stripByMode mode for this.)
2. I fixed the bug that made exttrans the same as plaintext.
3. I added a nice feature that allows people to indent lines just by indenting their submitted text. (eg If people try to paste Python code, it will now display.)
4. I made a minor modification to make the displayed comments a little easier for humans to read.
5. I modified your "Reduce the count of multiple lines" to not just reduce them by 2/3, but to actually keep them to a max of 2. I made them substantially harder to fool.
All in all little stuff that had been bugging me for a looong time...
My stupid email may cause these diffs to wrap. Make the obvious fix by hand if it does...
First the diff to public_html/comments.pl
$ diff -u comments.pl.00.01.26 comments.pl
--- comments.pl.00.01.26 Fri Jan 21 10:42:01 2000
+++ comments.pl Wed Jan 26 14:34:10 2000
@@ -219,7 +219,7 @@
"</td></tr>\n";
print "<tr><td align=right valign=top>Comment</td>";
print "<td><textarea wrap=virtual name=postercomment rows=10 cols=50>";
- print $$F{postercomment};
+ print &stripByMode($$F{postercomment}, "literal");
print "</textarea><BR>(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!
Don't forget the http://!)</td></tr>\n";
print "<tr><td> </TD><TD>\n";
Now to Slash.pm
$ diff -u Slash.pm.00.01.26 Slash.pm
--- Slash.pm.00.01.26 Wed Jan 26 13:18:55 2000
+++ Slash.pm Wed Jan 26 14:54:28 2000
@@ -1175,14 +1175,20 @@
my $str = shift;
my $fmode = shift || "nohtml";
- $str=stripBadHtml($str);
- if($fmode eq "plaintext" || $fmode eq "exttrans") {
- $str=~s/[\n]/<br>/gi; # pp breaks
- $str=~s/\<br\>\<br\><br\>/<br><br>/gi;
- } elsif($fmode eq "exttrans") {
+ $str =~ s/(\S{90})/$1
+ if ($fmode eq "exttrans" or $fmode eq "literal") {
+ # Encode all HTML tags
$str=~s/\&/&/g;
$str=~s/\</</g;
$str=~s/\>/>/g;
+ }
+ if($fmode eq "plaintext" or $fmode eq "exttrans") {
+ $str=stripBadHtml($str);
+ $str=~s/[\n]/<br>\n/gi; # pp breaks
+ $str=~s/(?:\<br\>\s*){2,}\<br\>/<br><br>/gi;
+ # Preserve leading indents
+ $str =~ s/\t/
+ $str =~ s/\<br\>\n?( +)/"<br>\n" . (" " x length($1))/eg;
} elsif($fmode eq "nohtml") {
$str=~s/\<(.*?)\>//g;
}
@@ -1195,7 +1201,6 @@
{
my $str = shift;
- $str =~ s/(\S{90})/$1
$str =~ s/<(?!.*?>)//gs;
$str =~ s/<(.*?)>/approveTag($1)/sge;
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
A very good point. The trolls and first posters are annoying enough, but bringing the site down every five minutes would be very easy if there are holes in the code. Is this something that was considered before the code was released? I know security through obscurity is not generally thought of as security at all, but this would only make it easier for the arseholes of this world to wreak havoc.
Releasing the code does indeed make any security holes visible for outside attackers to take advantage of. However, the flip side to that is that it makes any security holes visible to honest people who will either point them out to the dev team or send patches themselves. Because of this, most vulnerabilities should be transient at worst.
Re. security through obscurity. That will certainly work in the short term, with much less effort on the part of the dev team. The problem is that security holes will eventually become known, which means that the code will have to either be fixed or thrown out after a finite and probably shorter-than-expected time period. The argument for this is that it may still be less work to re-write the code every n months than to find and patch security holes as they are exploited. The argument against this is that with visible code, you have a vast army of users augmenting your dev team's efforts.
Which is better? I can think of cases in which each would be clearly the best option. In most cases, though, you just wind up with a Holy War on the subject.
Well, considering how people were mentioning wanting a php-based slashdot earlier I guess I should plug phpslash Seeing as I work on it and all:)
It's not slash0.9, (based on slash0.2 with improvments) but it's in php and in resonable development with plans to add all the current slashdot goodies.
True, but look at it from slashdots point of view. I doubt they will intergrate many features created by the public into their codebase. I've talked to Malda a number of times about new ideas and most of the time hes said that he isn't interested in putting xyz into slashdot.
The only thing they will loose if someone takes slashdot, and uses it on their own site, but doesn't distribute it, is any changes this person made, and any bug fixes.
Esentially here, slashdot (unless they've had a change of heart), don't want the community developing it for slashdot. (Yes, they don't mind the community developing the slashcode for themselves, but its unlikely they will incorperate many ideas into slashdot).
There are some really neat features that I'm sure the slashdot crew will incorperate, but I suspect they don't care that much if someone comes up with a new slashdot mod but doesn't distribute the modification.
If I were CmdrTaco, and last time I checked I'm not, I'd release it under the GPL, then fork the code. Have the pure slashdot code that I maintain, and let someone else maintain the public slashcode, that gets all the neat features added in. And if i saw a feature I liked, get a patch and add it to my slashdot.
---
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
I must say, I was beginning to think that the corporatization/borgification of /. had begun. Given the lack of progress up to this point, I figured that Andover would copyright the code, patent the moderation system (and I think it IS patentable) and would begin licensing the software to other discussion sites. Glad to see I was wrong :)
You should not forget about Squishdot (runs on top of Zope). While it still has a long way to go, it's quite usable. It runs on technocrat.net, if you want an example.
Petru
The problem with releasing a website's code under the GPL is that it's entirely possible for someone to use the code without distributing it -- what's distributed is the content generated by the code, not the code itself (or binaries thereof). This is the same problem with GPLing optimizing compilers, and it hasn't prevented anyone from releasing plenty of compilers, but it is an application where the GPL might not be ideal.
Congratulations all the same.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I would be very upset and very happy if they released a PHP-version of /. - I am currently in the process of programming my own site (modelled in part on /.) using PHP. If the current release were executed in PHP I would have release from my programming woes (setting up and managing the messaging system) and new woes - incorporating in those elements that I have already created.
Honestly, I was stunned by the cleverness of the Slashdot design the first time I saw it. I have learned more about PHP through trying to recreate those elements I like myself than I ever would have learned by simply configuring it to work. By programming it myself, using PHP, I have not only become very comfortable in PHP but I am building a far better site as a result. Originally my site was a directory of websites with an attached message board (which saw too little use) - now it will become a more tightly integrated combination of both. The directory portion - with attendant management tools on the Admin side - is complete, the remaining elements focus on the most difficult section - the messaging and topic creation system.
Once I have a fully functional website with the minimum of required elements in place then I can begin to study how the moderation system, and other elements of Slashdot work.
It would probably be far quicker for me to simply download 0.9 and configure it for my purposes (and it may come to that) but I am so far very happy with the performance and ease of learning/use of PHP.
For anyone not already versed in perl (and even then) I would urge them to explore PHP if they are engaging in dynamic website design.
Sorry I can't place a link to my site but its not ready for viewing yet - it looks pretty and some portions work but there are major holes in it. I think I will be ready to unveil it as beta inside of a month or so with luck.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
KissAssAtAndover (hellyeah);
return NothingToCommunity;
}
In what's sure to make Ye Olde Taco throw down his hands with grief(lets not even talk about Neal and Pat, whose entire faces are only moments away from contorting into paryoxysms of fear, rage, and inevitability)...
Next up is the SlashDistro.
Maybe it'll be Mandrake, maybe it'll be Redhat, maybe it'll be the next jaw dropping creation from a couple of sixteen year olds, but we're going to see something you slap onto a spare server that gives you your own personal Slashdot, preinstalled.
You *know* it's coming to ISPs. You *know* "personal slashdots" are coming, at minimum, to dedicated Colos, and soon, everything from Geocities to whatever.
There have been other works of Weblog sites and software, but nothing as feature complete as Slash. The cost of eyeballs just went up--thanks, guys!
Homestead's already done some stuff with integrating Palmpilots and personal web pages. The most interesting stuff I see is a total integration of the wireless experience with a the online log.
The diary strikes back.
Then again, there's nothing sadder than an empty comment field...look for the first major mod to the Slash code is topic-level threading instead of story level.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Go ye therefore to http://lists.slashdot.org/mailman/li stinfo.cgi and subscribe to yonder slashcode mailing lists.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
How close, other than the mentioned slashboxes, is this to the real thing(tm).
I suppose you could sum it up two ways:
Is it bug for bug the same?
If we come up with a new amazing idea that is so amazing CmdrTaco instantly wants to put it in, will our patch to the Slash v0.9 go straight onto the real site, or is Slash v0.9 a total rewrite from the current running slashdot on slashdot.org?
---
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
In meta-moderation, the message at the top of the page states that duplicates are fine. I say _some_ duplicates are fine. I understand that one is moderating a moderation, not the displayed comment. But as the moderation is a discrete value, it really should be the case that if several people moderate a comment as, for example, Interesting, then only one instance of Interesting should appear on a meta moderation page, and a meta moderation of Fair or Unfair should be applied to all the moderations with the same value. This would further increase the amount of meta moderation done without adding any user effort. Maybe I am just unlucky, but I see this kind of duplicate almost every day.
well um, save etoy.com! oops, done too.
then find the mars polar lander! oh, we have signals too! damn, everything is getting resolved today. Guess there won't be news on slashdot tomorrow. ;-P
Is this the appropriate time to drop a shameless plug for your weblog? :) I remeber reading some time ago that perl was chosen because of its efficiency with all the string manipulation and stuff while being easy to develop at the same time. I've found that php has worked wonderfully for my purposes (although I get nowhere near even a fraction of the traffic that /. gets) and that it's much more easy to develop in. There seems to be a function for everything in web development, and it has a mostly perl compatible regexp function (and a few of its own). I've tried php4 (for speed tests), but it broke a few of the regexp functions that we had in place. So, to get to the point, what do the people feel is the best language for writing such a weblog in terms of efficiency and development time?
And here's my shameless plug - Digital Theatre News
just hope there arent any holes for script kiddies to find and DoS /. now that the new code is out
I'm sorry, sir? Is sir perhaps suggesting that opening up source code helps attackers to exploit security holes? Has sir not read the words of Bruce Schneier ? Is sir not aware that keeping source secret is the way to make it easier for script kiddies to discover security holes? Despite what sir thinks, sir will find that skript kiddies prefer to scrutinise binaries for security holes, spurning such vulgarities as source code. As Mr Schneier has pointed out again and again, the only way to be truly safe from DoS attacks is to be repeatedly DoS'd again and again until everyone loses interest ^H^H^H^H^H^H the community helps patch the holes.
This move is a punch in the nose for the "security through obscurity" movement and a shining vote of confidence in the "open source security model". Inspired, I have carried out the following moves to purge my life of "security through obscurity".
I hereby announce that my home phone number is +34 0191 429 7342. I hope that this will protect me from telemarketers.
My userid is "admin", and my password is "goyoujets", thus securing my website.
My financial details will shortly be published on the web, so that the "community" can help to protect me from tax audits. I am currently evading around £20,000 of VAT per year, and would appreciate help in fixing this bug before HM Customs and Excise throw me in jail.
And my medical records will be made public as soon as I can persuade my doctor to co-operate. This will cure me of all known diseases.
Follow my example! Open-source your life today! Bruce Schneier has!
I'll have my (white) limo at LWCE, we'll have a sign for Bruce to wave as he stands in the sunroof, AND Emmett will be there with a brand-new Sony digital Hi-8 camcorder to make a permanent record of Bruce making a spectacle of himself, which we will post online for your downloading and viewing pleasure.
(All this is "weather permitting," of course.)
;-)
- Robin "roblimo" Miller
I've put a mirror up at http://shiftq.linux.com/~mmichie.
Enjoy. After all, I'd hate to see Slashdot get Slashdotted (I need to feed my addiction dammit)! :)
The more you know, the less you understand.
Kurt
Server51.freshmeat.net
[(quoted from Bruce Perens IRC Interview)
:]
_ _____________
"Q: If we release the Slash code, will you paint your car yellow? (Submitted by roblimo1)
A: If slashdot releases the slash code as Open Source, Roblimo can drive his limo to LinuxExpo New York, on Feb 2nd, park it in front of the Javitz Conference Center, and I'll pop out of the sun roof and wave signs at people saying that "Slashdot code is now open source", and in general make a spectacle of myself. ]
Well now. I believe we can all forget the bantering concerning politics and reasoning behind this release. The above statement is validation enough in itself.
See ya all at the Expo!
_______________________________________________
--
driph
First, thanks to the guys at SlashDot for the release, and for making the damn thing in the first place.
:) ) But you know, that's really the author's perogative. Sometimes, you have a lil pride in what you want to show people.
Second, either thanks or a big ole kick in the nuts to all the trolls and me too'ers who jumped on hounding CmdrTaco to release the source-- I haven't decided which yet. You guys were ruthless, and though I think you all are patting yourselves on the back on "making this happen," I somehow think that this was in the works for a bit longer than the latest round of fervor.
How many of you asking-- demanding!-- for the source to be released, have an Open Source software project of your own out there? (I do. It's the Iaijutsu Web Application Framework Project, also on SourceForge.)
Now I'm not asking this to say "Ah hah! Go make a release of your own before you throw stones!" However, it would be nice if you knew what it were like. I suspect there weren't a large proportion of people in the outcry who actually to have active Open Source projects out there. I tend ot think that those people who DO have projects going out there were going easy on the guys at SlashDot.
Why? Because making a release is HARD WORK, *especially* if your web application project has come to be tightly wedded to the machine it's running on and is not particulrly general to install on others. It's *especially* tough when you have a day job that takes up a lot of your time, such as oh say, running a major Internet destination for news and information. Most times its easier to just put it off awhile..
BUT!! You say. ESR told me to release early, release often! And I believe this-- but look at what happened to Mozilla. It's working now, but it took awhile-- they released *too early*. I truly think there *is* such a thing, release too early, without a clean enough package, without enough documentation, and people will bitch just as much to you about your crappy tarball as they have been about you not releasing earlier.
This isn't *POOF* "Sorry guys, I've been a prick, I guess I'll release all the top secret RPMS, Debian packages, tarballs, and 100 pages of docs and man pages I've been sitting on." There *is* a bit of work to be done to 1) Even get SlashDot code pried out of the machine it's running on, and 2) Package it up so that you can wedge it into your machine, and 3) Make it look vaguely like something someone other than CmdrTaco can understand.
Now I know a lot of you are going to say, screw you, I would have loved to have just the pure pile of steaming dung of random code SlashDot may be RIGHT THIS SECOND. (Apologies to SlashDot, but I've gotten the impression that tho it works well, it might not be pretty.
I also know that, even tho you hopeful conumers of raw unpretty code may say you exist out there-- I know that there'll be just as many who download it and e-mail CmdrTaco "i cant get this Slish thing to do c00l stuph on my 31337 LinuxOne machine". So there's a support issue involved, even if you say you're not going to support it. So you have to have *some* answer to it, even it it's just taking a bit more time in the packaging, docs, and commenting to stave off some confusion.
So, have fun with it, and *please* try to go easy on the author of the release now that it's out... He's been called every name in the book, whil probably working his ass off. The last thing he needs now is a billion questions and everyone to say, "You know, this wasn't that cool after all, Slashdot code sucks!"
:)