Slashdot Mirror
New Slash Version v1.0.3
pudge writes "Yo. We released slash-1.0.3. Bug reports and CVS and file downloads are on SourceForge. Slashcode is now hosted at Exodus with Slashdot and Freshmeat. "
The scary part is that now Slashdot and Slashcode are totally synched up... which means programmers can e-mail diffs instead of bug reports and feature suggestions (hint hint hint!)
Slashcode and Slashdot are synched up? Who are you, and what did you do with CmdrTaco?! We demand his release!!
Now if I just had a good use for it. Other than read News for Nerds that is...
sig this
A friend and I just setup Slash on a server for his work. The setup was pretty easy. Kudos to the Slash team for getting this out and making it easy to install.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
In the last update, you mentioned that you abandoned Adfu in favor of a C program that you developed for ad-rotation, which would run under Apache. When will the code for that be available?
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Constitutionally Correct
My /.-Fu is more powerful than your /.-Fu!
/. reader/poster/troll, how will this code stand up to such a demanding job I wander? It is time to rewrite everything in Assembler and JSP!
Why is it such a big deal again? What's so special about some forum code? Of-course it is nice and all but is it really scallable to millions and maybe even billions of users? Imagine the time when EVERYONE on this planet becomes a
You can't handle the truth.
When I have set my default threshold to tree and commentsort to nested, and when I click on the "Parent" link of a comment, where the parent is beyond my threshold, I get nothing or at least nothing useful. (No cid and pid=0).
It looks like now I have no excuse any more not to fix this bug myself. :-/
--Carpe diem!
Yeah, they're so lousy, they can't even come up with a web site that anyone actually uses. :p
And what's wrong with using what you know? If the code _works_ and it works just fine, why write it in a "more complicated" language? Did I mention that the code works?
I hate to make a "me too" kind of post, but what is it with the BSD and Apache sections? The BSD colors aren't *terribly* bad, but the apache?! BLECH. It gives me a headache.
www.poak.net
the real wonderful part is that there will now be lots more 'pairs of eyes' checking the slashcode for loopholes and bugs that will allow quicker bugfixes and a more robust system...
ai731
--
"I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent"
Carpe diem!
Some of us out here are even worse programmers, and wouldn't have the skill to write something on this scale if they wanted to. I should know, I'm one of them.
I setup slash a few months ago, and had a major learning experience with apache, perl, CPAN and funky virtual server setups. Now, I've got it running great and I'm extending the functionality by running Zope side-by-side.
I've been talking about my website idea for a LONG time with my family. Thanks to these lousy programmers, an even worse programmer has been able to impress a lot of people.
Now, if I can just get hits.
Dave
Visit Lockjaw's Lair. He won't bite.
For the last few weeks, Slashdot has add annoying "pauses" where the browser will connect to the server, but no data will ever come. These pauses last for anything from one minute to 30. Then I have to squish all my posting in before the next piece of downtime.
Has anyone else noticed this?
Harumph - does this include the patch for the meta-moderation bug I flamed you (pudge) about? It was somewhere on the beta site, and the comments are probly gone now. At least I can meta-moderate now.
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Visit
I have been begging for better colors for months.
/. is so great, why not let users configure their own color, or would that be too much load on the server...
I do like the basic gray and green, but the other sections suck nuts.
Since
-ed
It depends what you're trying to do. Write "Hellow World" in java and perl. See which is most complicated.
Rewrite it in VBScript so that it runs locally on compliant browsers.
Sorry..... I'll shoot myself now.
Slashdot is in definate requisite of having a modified light mode in comments... The HTML is really hard to read.
http://siokaos.org/
Here's a few things to bandy about (no need for actual diffs).
Theming
Everyone bitches about the colors, especially in the BSD and Apache sections (and, I must say, YRO isn't much better). Why not setup a colors preferences panel? That shouldn't be too hard to implement.
Removal of Comments
Given the recent controversy over Microsoft and what not, give users the ability to remove their own comments, maybe with a karma penalty or something. We can moderate our system, but we can't responsibly manage it.
That's just a couple of ideas, and there's tons more, I'm sure. On to Slash 2.0!
More room for personal stuff in the Personal Slashbox is what's between me and setting /. as "Home". Or read a document from my site and put it in a box.
Ah, and stop killing Opera.
-/elad
I think that Cascading Style Sheets _should_ mean that you can set up your own colour schemes, which override those used by Slashdot. If Slashdot is using CSS properly, that is.
I don't know if any browser lets you specify different stylesheets for different sites though.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
and now we will continue to code around the trolls.
"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do." - I don't remember
If you can come up with better SQL, stop your whining and send a better query to CmdrTaco. Not only wil you get a pat on the head (and maybe a cookie if you're particularly inventive), but if your new uber SQL query speeds up Slashdot, then everybody will love you for it.
/. crew doesn't really know SQL. It sounds like you *might*. If you *do* prove it and make SlashCode better for all eternity (replace the abysmal queries with mediocre queries - even small improvements are good). Otherwise, quit your whining.
I am sure the
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
And what about replies to removed comments? Would they be removed then, too? If they wouldn't, you would end up with comments without correlation.
NB, I think the above comment is totally overrated. :-(
--Carpe diem!
'nuff said.
...anyone of you had to write a thing like Slash from scratch, knowing it would get as many visitors and posters as Slashdot has, do you think it would be a good idea to use PHP and MySQL ?
-Why, or why not ?
-Would PHP(4) keep up with the amount of traffic ?
-Would PHP make this better maintable and expandable by other people ?
-And would PHP increase the development speed ?
I'd personaly give all of the above questions a positive answer...
This post is powered by caffeine
Carpe diem!
No, it wouldn't. Actually, it would put *less* load on the server, as well as consume less badwidth.
The script should form the page with no formatting, just *valid* content. A .css would be generated on the fly, but this would be just a MySQL lookup, real fast.
Alternatively, the style sheet could be embedded in the document or stored as "username".css, being updated each time the user decides to change preferences.
Another thing that is really in need of change is the time it takes to download pages. Why throw everything together in a single table? Couldn't we have a table for the story, sections, links and preferences, and then have the posts outside tables, or arranged in strips of, say, 1 thread per table?
Before anyone asks:
"Overrated" moderation only on moderated posts.
You, for example, seem to have high enough karma for your posts to default at 2. However, once in a while you may say something that really doesn't deserve a 2 - so then the "overrated" moderation would be appropriate, even though no one has moderated the comment in question yet.
Some people get a +1 because of high karma, and then end up posting a bunch of extremely mediocre messages at a starting score of 2. For people that browse with a threshold (or highlight threshold) of 2, as I used to do, this means a lot of tripe shows up. This can be annoying to those who keep such a threshold in order to get a collection of high quality comments to read.
People who get the +1 can post a comment without the +1 by checking a box. This is a good thing to do if the message is not particularly informative, insightful, interesting, funny, etc. People who post mediocre comments at a score of 2 deserve to get an "overrated" moderation.
That's my opinion of course.
-- My comment is above.
I don't understand the complaint. AFAICT (as far as I can tell, they released the source code, will continue to release the code, etc., so I don't see how they have "left the community", so to say. Please elucidate...
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
The most important goal of this change should be code compactness, whereby repetitive use of bgcolor, font, align, etc is replaced with simplified CSS classes. This should significantly reduce bandwidth requirements per user, most important considering the ever-solid limit of 56k dial-up.
While it is nowhere near valid HTML 4, users of the very latest nightly builds of Mozilla (an important display bug was recently fixed), or the excellent IE5 for Windows (I hate Microsoft more than YOU do, but their HTML rendering engine is admittedly a work of art), can check out the following link here: whirlpool.net.au
It's my hobby site with a slash-esque feel, written totally by hand and powered with Cold Fusion (it's no PHP, but it's easy and fast). The design concept, programming, content and everything else was done by me.
I would be very interested in donating a design structure for Slashdot, keeping in mind download times, the legacy look-and-feel, and HTML 4 compliance. test
--
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
A little off-topic, but important to /. and /.'ers
/.
/.'ers how important bug reporting is. Why do we have to hunt for that link? It needs to be prominent, in several places around the site, including the 'front page'
Sometimes I notice bugs that do not seem to be in the Slashcode per se, but seem to be affecting Slashdot alone. Often these are not consistent ongoing bugs, but transient, lasting 1-3 days.
One example: one weekend, my BBC Science slashbox was filled with VA/Linux corporate links instead of articles. The problem was reproducible (on my account at least) from different machines.
I realize this may be due to changes and updating (both software and hardware), but I am of the opinion that 'bugs don'f fix themselves'. I have reported a few to slashcode, but clearly this was some sort of config error at
Also, it took me quite a bit of searching before I was moderately confident that Slashcode was the place to go. This should be in the FAQ, or better, be a separate entry in the upper left corner, along with FAQ, privacy, submit story, etc.
Slashdot: every responsible site needs a good site specific bug reporting mechanism! How would you feel about *any* company that linked you to the BBS software manufacturer, under the presumption that the underlying code may be flawed but their own site implementation and administration was perfect?
No one knows better that
_____________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
I added a special "Slashdot" bug group on SourceForge yesterday, so you can submit your Slashdot bugs in the same place, but tag them as specific to Slashdot if you like.
And yeah, I suppose this should be somewhere on the site in a FAQ or something. I just mentioned it to CowboyNeal.
At some point, will the "Plain Old Text" posting option get fixed so that it really posts exactly what gets typed?
You know, like not processing tags and not removing anything that looks like a tag?
(Previewing, I see now that it has just somehow been swapped with the "Extrans" option.)
The cake is a pie
This information is available today. If you click on the #cid of a comment, it shows a breakdown of the moderation so far.
But it would be nice if this information were part of the header of each comment on the main page.
I have to disagree with many of the other posters - I've found that web sites with CSS often render poorly with my browser. I'm in favor of simplified HTML that lets the browser do most of the formatting. So what if the colors are bad? A preferences panel for color choices will take care of that. There's no reason to make major changes to Slashcode.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
How about having a mode where posts of different scores are given different shades of grey... score 5 would be bold and black, score 0 a barely readable light grey and score -1 white! We could tell at a glance how high a score a post has. (Perhaps we could even have flamebait in red?). Yes, I know this is silly.
Score -1, stupid.
In your opinion, what defines a 1.0 release?
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I was just hoping that Taco, et. al. would read this and know that their hard work is appreciated.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
It could be done, of course. But it would be a bit of work with a good graphics library.
--
Socrates was asked where he was from. He replied not "Athens," but "The world."
You picked the code that is actually the oldest code in Slash (significantly older than the MySQL book). It's being changed. Schemas are being changed, code is being changed. You found some obviously crufty code that needs to get changed, that is being changed. Good for you.
Fixing the schema would take about 5 minutes wouldn't it? And the part about the primitive join holds for any database not just MySQL, so it could have been fixed before Mr. Dubois' book was printed right?
..because I dared criticize the almighty Slash code. I tell you how to fix it, and the reply is "do a patch". You can all blow me.
Yeah, I know I'm not the only one saying it, but I don't see enough posts saying it yet:
Thanks for releasing your CGI code, and double thanks for getting the running code and the public source in sync.
I was one of the more annoyingly whiny complainers before the 0.9 slash release; here's hoping that now that both the slash code and school are out I can do something with it this summer..
I'm going to refuse to moderate from now on because of its negative effect on my karma.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
No.
Something along the lines of the '^' key in gnus. Because of my moderation threshold and threading options, I often see posts that are replies to other posts, which have been moderated up, but don't see the original post at all, because they are below my threshold.
A link to take me to the original post, or see the entire thread, would be very handy.
--
Why Ah Must Scribble GNU
Give me one reason you can't change the VARCHAR's to CHAR's. There is no reason. And I can only find a couple of places in the code that refer to a column being NULL. It wouldn't take that long. Everyone acts like the slash code is so big and ungainly, what a joke. I'm working on a project with a friend of mine that's well over 10,000 lines of code without any problems.
Dude, you need to get a life.
Let's see, I'm working at a startup with a bunch of options and starting my own company on the side and I just got back from my vacation in Hawaii. What else do I need?
I could not care less about options or startups or Hawaii. My own personal hell would involve owning my own company. I only care about having good friends and family and doing interesting work and making the world around me better. None of those things you mention are meaningful to me at all, so obviously we value entirely different things, and I couldn't tell you what else you need on that front. Maybe a shiny new car or a jet plane?
But what you clearly do need is to realize that people do things differently than you'd do them and that _it doesn't matter_. You identified the code that we all know needs to be fixed. I told you it is being fixed. You think it should be fixed now. We decided to put such changes only into the development branch. You don't like that. Good for you. Whoop de do. Let it go. Take your prozac.
The fact that you care so much that such an insignificant change (i.e., would have little if any immediate benefit) in code you don't use and have nothing to do with is not being done "right now" is pretty sad. That's all I'm saying.
This would work from a database POV (point of view), but not from a human communication point of view.
I think it's much less intrusive to have the ability to delete one's posts with the replies possibly lacking context than to give someone the power to delete an entire thread by removing all replies to their post.
If a few trolls drop a flame, garner replies and then yank their post, perhaps people will learn not to reply to trolls.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Actually, the rounded corner is easily handled with a simple PNG. As long as you keep the "main" area white, you can fade any color to it by changing the alpha channel transparency.
Constitutionally Correct