Slashdot Mirror
Slash 2.0 Released
Update
In response to several comments mentioned so far:
Yes, the abstraction layer is in place for supporting any DB. Only the MySQL has been really tested properly by us, but others say the Postgres version is good, and an Oracle version has been floating around for awhile. Adding other databases is relatively easy. Nobody has any idea which will be fastest.
No there is no built in spell check. It also does not automatically correct my habit of switching to/too then/than around (yes, I know the rules. I just don't care enough to backspace and fix it. Get spell checked news from CNN)
Codenames exist because they're fun. What fun is saying "I'm working on 1.2.7 when you can say "Bite my Shiny Metal Ass".
System requirements are still going to be reasonably high since this is a system designed for a million page views, not the 7 page views that most weblogs get. But if properly configured, it will run on very minimal hardware. Back in the day remember that this code served 800,000 page views a day on a single dual p2 w/ 500 megs of RAM. Today thats practically entry level for a real server.
Some minor moderation changes exist, but most of those will be going into Fry (2.2, the codename for the next release, the version that Slashdot itself will run). The 2.0 release was about giving us a stable platform upon which to build new features, not about significantly altering anything functionally. There are changes, but they aren't huge.
If someone wants a Slashdot Redesign, submit one. If I like it, I'll switch. But believe me, I'm picky. Slash itself is very flexible and can look like pretty much anything you want as many other slash sites on the net have demonstrated.
Slash will have more support for various XML DTDs as they come along, and depending on if we find them interesting or not.
Slash will do just fine on virtual hosts now thanks to clever work by Krow.
...the bug whereby a word over a certain length (90 chars if I recall correctly) is broken up into two words. That kinda screwed up long URLs in posts.
I'm too lazy to read the changelogs.
PS. For those unfamiliar with this, it's a very popular tactic of US politicians and political whores of tying every conceivable law and bill to the nation's children, because what kind of person would oppose or vota agianst something that protects the children. Now translate this into the /. domain and you have a receipe for karma whoring.
PPS. And some final comments on the uselessness of /. karma. There are 2 kinds of posters on /.: those with lots of karma and those with very little. Anyone posting genuinely interesting and informative comments will only be able to do so on very few occasions (just whatever falls in his area of expertise), his other comments arelikely to be modded down for various reasons, and if he participates in the 'community' (that is to say by moderaring) he may as well say bye bye to all his karma. What's the easies way to lose your karma? Moderate. Try it if you don't believe me.
...why Taco posted the responses to the comments in the main story rather than the comments section. I guess he doesn't want to lose his precious karma :)
Actually, it isn't any better.
After spending what seems like years on this new version, CT eventually decided that it wasn't as good as 1.0, but decided to release it as 2.0 just for kicks.
Please note the extreme sarcasm in my writing.
When is the IIS version coming out?
You are going to need to fiddle with these settings. You are also going to need to fiddle with the tuning of Apache and MySQL as well. Chances are your MySQL settings could use tweaking and your MaxClients setting in Apache could be lowered and MaxRequests could be raised.
To expect every weblog to be set to be properly configured for your system out of the box is ridiculous!
Fiddle around with the system a bit...that is why you installed it, correct? If you are having problems with performance, check out the #slash channel on Slashnet! Most of the developers working on Slash hang there and are more than happy to help with such issues.
Your criticism has been noted, however, and when the development team has time to sit down and rest a bit (read, after Slashdot is ported) maybe we'll have time to write up a performance guide for Slash (in addition to all of the copious documentation that needs to be written). However, you could greatly speed up the time it needs to take to research all this by trying out settings and letting us know how it all works.
We can only do what we get feedback on. Performance feedback on various systems would be invaluable right now, so for you and anyone else testing Slash: if you have speed problems, LET US KNOW. Send your MySQL settings and your httpd.conf to the Slash developer's mailing lists and those there may makerecommendations to you as to where settings can be adjusted to give to some extra performance (again, when we have the time to do so).
The resources are out there for you to get assistance with your problems. Feel free to use them.
The values you want are 'maxkarma' and 'minkarma' in the Variables section.
Check out the slash1toslash2 script in the utils/ directory.
I'm setting up a Slash site. I had someone try to talk me into using PHP Nuke, and I looked at it, but I decided that for my requirements, Slashcode fit the bill perfectly.
PHP is a great language, but there are a couple minor problems. While PHP is an Apache module, you can't actually write other modules in PHP. You can with mod_perl. Slashcode uses this feature to store much of the database in RAM. Sure that makes it a memory hog, but it also makes it faster. With any PHP-based solution, you have to hit the DB every time you want to get anything dynamic.
Also, psuedo-compiled versions of Perl modules are stored and re-used in Apache. PHP scripts have to be interpreted every time they're accessed. Unless, of course, you use the Zend optimizer, but it is not open source.
Not bashing PHP -- I use it for most of my own web development and like it. It just seems that for heavy-use sites that share lots of data, mod_perl is somewhat better.
:-)
You posted a link to PEAR, which is just a code repository like Perl's CPAN. How does that relate to writing Apache modules in PHP?
I know about database caching, but a PHP script still has to hit the DB for that to work, right? Does MySQL even do caching well? AFAIK, Slashcode puts much of its data directly in variables in Apache, so the DB doesn't need to be hit to access them.
Thanks for the link to the free cache. I wasn't aware of that. Now I can get optimized sites without linking impure (unFree) code into my webserver.
In any case, saying they have to wade through thousands of stories a day is just a red herring. No matter how many they have to wade through they only post a few. It's the posting that matters. I don't care if Taco corrects the spelling of all the submissions before he checks them out, all that matters is that he check spelling before _posting_. It literally only takes a few seconds. It's the right thing to do. Would you release code to the entire world without comments, with generic variable names and no indenting? Of course not, you'd be embarassed to. So why make such simple mistakes when posting stories to a site you built from the ground, that you make a living off, that the entire world reads?
And it's not like /. stories are time sensitive. No one's gonna die or get hurt if a story is a few seconds late while Taco pulls up a new browser window for dictionary.com . /. posts are just regurgitations of other stories, and the occasional exclusive/original features definitely don't have any urgency. I don't understand what the problem is.
I dunno, it's a matter of talking pride in everything you do, no matter how small or important. Spelling mistakes just give out a strong impression of unprofessionalism and slopiness.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
That is 100% your *opinion*.
It most certainly is, and I never claimed it was anything else.
"And its not like /. stories are time sensitive". Right, things like Viruses, Worms, Microsoft vulnerabilities, new kernel releases, all have no time sensitivity. None.
You're just splitting hairs here. There is no harm done in releasing a virus alert a few seconds or a few minutes later. Another non-issue, virus alerts don't even get announced on /. first, you're more likely to find a virus alert on zdnet first, which is where they're linked to from /.
You insult him, you attack him
Oh, now _I'm_ insulted! I never insulted the man, I'm just stating my opinion, it has nothing to do with him personally, his writing (believe it or not), his code or his other work. I'm just saying, it is my opinion posting stories with spelling mistakes for millions of people to see does not seem professional to me. Nothing more nothing less. Roblimo doesn't post stuff like that, Cliff doesn't (usually), Katz just needs to be more liberal with periods.
Whether YOU rank those [cnn] higher or not doesnt matter one itsy, teeny, little bit.
It doesn't and I never said it did.
Typical /. response to any criticism, no matter how minor or trivial. 'Go build your own'. That's hardly something even worth responding to, it's so disingeneous, a last ditch defense when you can't think of anything else. In any case, my point still stands unassaulted, there is no excuse not to take (literally) a few seconds and look over your writing before you post it.
But thats just my opinion, and I state it as such.
Well, good for you, that was just so gosh darn +5 Insightful. I mean, wow, you didn't put words in my mouth, take them out of context or even totally ignore what I was saying.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Yes, it is a 2.0 release. Look at the distribution name yourself, it is right there. And you are lying when you say I doubt it could handle production use, because I use it in production every day. Of course, you are an anonymous coward, so it is easy to lie.
Yes indeedy. It works a little better now than it did (mostly in that the sites share the same command line utils, and it is much easier to set up the httpd configs), but the essence is the same as it was. The problem the original poster was addressing was needing daemon processes, which hasn't changed, either.
That wasn't the README that is included in the distribution.
Slash 2.0 has some support for PostgreSQL, and some people are actively working on it. It really works pretty well under PostgreSQL, I believe, but there are a few kinks to work out.
There is nothing psuedo-compiled about the perl code cached in the Apache process. It is compiled code in RAM, just like any other compiled code. Perl is not interpreted in the traditional sense of the word; it is compiled and then executed, on the fly. With mod_perl caching, the compilation happens once, and you're good to go.
Yes, polls have always been included with the Slash distribution (since 0.9 anyway).
You can change the moderations in Slash yourself. You can add the article read count too, just by changing the templates, I believe. Never tried it, but the data should be available to the template.
Turning off related links would be trivial, but would require a code change, just to allow the user to save the option. Once the code is there to allow the user to save that option, a slight change to the template is all that is required to enable it.
Yes, and? Slash 2.0 probably couldn't handle the traffic of Slashdot, though we don't know for sure. That is one of the several reasons Slashdot is not running Slash 2.0.
Slash 2.2 will likely see a bunch of performance improvements, too, like page caching in RAM.
Yes, under various scenarios, it will not be very efficient in comparison to some other systems. But most systems won't be as efficient as plain small CGIs, either. Or static HTML.
Well, individual users cannot have themes. But you can easily distribute a set of "templates" (see Template Toolkit for your theme and a site can install them. Pretty much all the layout is controlled through templates, and it is very flexible.
Slashdot will never run Slash 2.0. Slashdot will run Slash 2.2. Slash 2.0 was phase one of the rewrite. Now we need to add a few more features and optimize. We do eat our own dogfood, in that Slashcode has been running 2.0 (in various forms) for a couple of months now.
CaptTofu, Krow, and I are the core coders. Cliff and Jamie and CowboyNeal have helped us out a lot along the way. So have a bunch of other people, some of who are listed in the docs.
Using Slash for a smaller weblog is sortof like using an SUV to transport one person (yourself) a very short distance (two blocks) and back. It's overkill. It's wasteful of resources, and it doesn't really gain you anything.
Now, if they made a stripped-down veresion of Slash, specifically catered to smaller weblogs, but with a compatible config format, so that when/if the weblog became popular, upgrading was fairly painless - that would be something =)
Search 2010 Gen Con events
That's not a bug, it's a feature! Seriously, Rob capped it at 50 so people couldn't accumulate 2^16-1 karma points, then post thousands of trolls and goatse.cx links at +1
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Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
My php-nuke install has this hacked in, but it wasn't done very well.
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enterfornone - logging in for a change
Uhh... if you had quoted that in context , like so:
[...]to say nothing of utterly embarassing any other weblog software available for free, and written by us, and codenamed after a cartoon [...]
I think they're talking about VERSION 1.0 OF SLASHCODE ITSELF
I do hope you were kidding/trolling.
Plans are already well underway to move Slashdot to the new code base soon enough.
Two words: Beta site?
--Jim
This code is of course the source that runs Slashdot, however 2.0 is far more advanced then the code you see here, to say nothing of utterly embarassing any other weblog software available for free, and written by us, and codenamed after a cartoon. Plans are already well underway to move Slashdot to the new code base soon enough.
And a hearty "STFU" to the folks who're always bitching that you don't release the current code fast enough.
Good job, Taco.
Ironically enough, last night I released the latest version of Glasscode. It's the third release since 1.0 which was announced here on Slashdot a few months ago.
:)
The FM announcement is here.
For those interested, have fun
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Its not a bug. The cap is stop Karma whores. The funny thing is that there is a negative cap also, because when they put in a maximum cap all the idiots started reverse hordeing. Human nature is a funny thing.
:)
I'm not sure if 'hordeing' is the right spelling, but CT doesnt like spellcheckers, so it will have to do.
I dunno, it's a matter of talking pride in everything you do, no matter how small or important. Spelling mistakes just give out a strong impression of unprofessionalism and slopiness.
Regarding that last word, I take it posting to slashdot is not counted among "everything you do, no matter how small or important"?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
> You must not have a clue how slashcode works, or you have never heard of database caching.
If you are into caching and using Perl, check out the Cache::Cache project on SourceForge. It provides a solid architecture for caching results from databases, middle-tiers, etc., in web applications. I wrote the module as a followup to the File::Cache and IPC::Cache modules. It is in use on a number of high volume sites and seems to be doing rather well. Feedback, suggestions, bug reports, and contributions are always welcome.
That's OK, your spelling's good enough to be running this site :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
...and I *really* should have used the preview button to avoid those typos. Oh well.
± 29 dB
Because it's fun. peopel liek to have codenames. It lets geeks differentiate themselves from more than just the general populace; codenames separate us even more. It helps establish a little hierarchy within the geek population. Around average people, talking about SCSI, ATM, and kernels make you elite in some twisted fashion. Within the Slashdot crowd, though, everyone knows what you're talking about; you need a new wa of assertign social (mental) dominance. What better way then making something up? The other party is sure to be impressed by your seemingly limitless knowledge.
Say you're working on Slashcode, and people are like "Okay, cool." Say you're working on a project called bender, and suddenly people are curious about what your project really is.
So, really, codenames are a way to impress your enemies, confuse your friends, and pay homage to somethign you find nifty all at the same time. yay for bender!
± 29 dB
Seeing as how (bizarrely enough) slashdot seems to have slashdotted itself, the actual code can be had on sourceforge: here
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Learn to not take things out of context. What he said was:
"This code is of course the source that runs Slashdot, however 2.0 is far more advanced then the code you see here, to say nothing of utterly embarassing any other weblog software available for free, and written by us, and codenamed after a cartoon." (emphasis mine)
Geez. Used to be we had trouble with people not reading the articles now they don't even read the damn post.
Seeing as Slash 2.0 is codenamed Bender, does it have an all-new "In Your Face" Interface?
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"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
I guess it's a bad sign when the site with the new code is slashdotted itself
Sorta related... Anyone use PHPNuke? It's fast and pretty customizable, but the guy who codes it is clueless in the security department. Too bad, because it could be a really good product. It needs a serious security audit.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Slash will do just fine on virtual hosts now thanks to clever work by Krow.
Erm. Slash has always worked just fine on virtual hosts. Well, maybe not _always_, but it certainly did with version 0.9.3.
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Well they clearly say slash is designed for a million hits a day. Not really for use when co-hosted with other apps, It swallows all system resources, just like the best games, in order to give itself best advantage when the going gets tough.. Quite valid thing to do.
I suppose. But then why are they pushing it to anybody who needs a weblog? Performance for low- to medium-volume sites sucks pretty hard. It swallows all the RAM and then still performs worse than Scoop (and even Dope, which, when I ran the aforementioned tests, didn't use any caching whatsoever and wasn't even the least bit optimized).
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Sheesh, you don't remember when Rob was being called a child-molester every 15 minutes until he released the /. code?
Yes, I remember that. I'm not talking about him releasing it, but he acts as though it's the weblog to end all weblogs. If it doesn't perform well on smaller sites, it's not. And when somebody comments on the performance, he shouldn't make snappy comments about it not being designed for sites that get 7 hits a day. If this is the case, he should document this fact; it isn't mentioned at all on slashcode.com.
This 'community' gave him no end of shit for being a hipocrite [sp?] for running an (open source/free software/whatever)-centric site and not releasing the code that runs it.
No, this community didn't. The same people that bitch and moan about absolutely everything bitched and moaned about that as well.
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I can't speak as to slashcode's memory usage, but this statement is lamentable. A server process can and should take up as much RAM as it possibly can, so long as it's also capable of releasing parts of that RAM that are going for 'gravy' functionality when other apps need said RAM for core functionality.
I agree; however, not everyone who would like to run a weblog can dedicate a server to it. Oftentimes Apache has to coexist with other services, and Slashcode just takes over the whole box (RAM-wise). Maybe this is good behavior for a large server, but IMHO not a small one.
On a semi-related note, you say that a server should be capable of releasing parts of its RAM to other programs... how is a program supposed to know that the RAM it's using is needed for another program? I'm not aware of any functionality in the C library for this type of thing, but I could be wrong. Anybody know?
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What did you have blockcache set to?
Actually, I don't know. I didn't tune it for these tests - all the weblogs were pretty much at the stock install settings. Block caching was turned on though.
Were you using the beta software that's out, or are you speaking with the released 2.0 version?
The original tests were using the 1.0 release, the test of Bender used a recent beta, but not the release.
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It's a damn good weblog, for high-traffic sites.
:) Since it's designed to handle large sites and doesn't perform well for smaller ones, why don't they make this fact known?
I never claimed it wasn't, and I didn't mean to knock everybody's hard work on it. It's a fine piece of software (although CmdrTaco's original version was... well... messy before Krow, et al, started work on it, and I certainly would have designed it a bit differently internally.)
It's not meant for smaller sites. It's meant to be on it's own server, taking millions of hits, and performing well under pressure.
Right - which is what I'm complaining about
Now, if they made a stripped-down veresion of Slash, specifically catered to smaller weblogs, but with a compatible config format, so that when/if the weblog became popular, upgrading was fairly painless - that would be something =)
Yeah, that would be nice, actually. But changing weblogs isn't *that* difficult. It's just a matter of changing the templates for the new weblog to visually match (or at least come close) to the original and the writing a script which SELECTs the old values you want to save from the database and then INSERTs them into the new database. I already have the script written which will convert from Slash (0.9.3) to Scoop.
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Stop bitching. If you don't like it don't use it.
There's a difference between "bitching" and "constructive critisism." All I did was post a comment on the RAM usage of Slash, comparing it to a few other weblogs.
And to reply to the AC who replied to your comment, I don't make money off Smokedot. Do you see any ads?
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I've been running Slashcode on Smokedot for the last year, and I haven't exactly had the best experiences with it. First of all, it's running on a shared, freely hosted server, and Slash consistently uses too much RAM and CPU. I did some informal (very informal) tests on my local network, and here's how that went.
.shtml files, which speeds things up (I did the testing against index.pl and article.pl, obviously). But this is an annoying workaround, as the information you see is not necessarily up-to-date with what's in the database.
I installed Slash, Scoop, and Dope on virtual hosts on the same httpd. Then I'd stop and start httpd to get a clean server. Then I'd run a script which would request a few thousand pages very quickly and watch the free RAM level - I'd restart apache between tests so Slash wouldn't mess with Scoop's results, etc...
The box I used for testing was a 600mhz Alpha with 512MB of RAM. The MySQL server was on a different box so it wouldn't skew the results.
At the beginning of each test there was approximately 300MB free on the box. The Dope test reduced free RAM to about 220MB, Scoop reduced it to about 180MB, and Slash reduced it to about 4MB free (and I'm guessing it would have kept going if there was more RAM for it to play with). This is unacceptable, especially when you consider that Scoop was significanly faster than Slash in my testing. Slash does cache information as
Speedwise, Scoop was about 20% faster than Slash, while Dope was about right in the middle.
This was a test with version 1.0 of Slashcode, and I recently ran he same tests with a recent beta of Bender. I was shocked - not only was it more RAM-hungry than older versions, but it was slower as well! This may be all well and good for a site with tons of resources, like Slashdot, but for smaller sites it's just not a good idea.
Dope is a work in development, by the way, and it was supposed to replace Slashcode for Smokedot. But since I'm basically just reimplementing Scoop anyway, I'm considering just using Scoop instead and scrapping Dope (hurstdog keeps bugging me to work on Scoop instead).
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Slashcode 2.0 feature list: ...
* automatically replaces all occurrences of "then" with "than" in news posts ...
jesus christ dude.....hes giving the source code away...not pushing it on anyone....dont like it dont run it...welcome to the open source 12 ways to slove a problem mentality. God forbid the man thinks his work is alright, and somebody might want to read it.
Here's a change that I think would be helpfull...
Seperate the User Info page into two seperate pages. One that shows you your recent posts, etc. and one with your karma info.
Here's the catch. If you have karma over 15 or so, it COSTS 1 karma point each time you reload your karma level page. That should help with obsessive karma watching.
You can view your recent posts page as much as you want to see if someone replied to a comment, etc.
load "linux",8,1
Skins! YOU decide how /. looks to you.
Makes perfect sense. Choose the top 5 or so submissions and make it an option.
load "linux",8,1
That's why he likes perl!
load "linux",8,1
We had cool names for releases on projects that I was working on in the mid '80s. I don't think this is anything terribly new.
load "linux",8,1
I agree totally...
The way I see it: If Rob, or anyone else who has such a role in society, can't be bothered to correct known, and rather simple to fix, mistakes - what else is he/she/it not bothering to fix? I'm not saying it's Bad(tm) to have a couple of errors here and there, but being lazy about it does annoy me...
I mean, if CNN started having a ton of basic spelling/grammar errors, wouldn't readership/viewership/etc. not be as trusting? I don't know about the rest of you, but I would start to feel a little mistrusting... *shrug* Maybe I just feel that public figures should try a little harder sometimes............
How do you expect Slashdot to be running something that they *just* released? It's common sense that they should finish the product, then move Slashdot over to it, not move Slashdot, then finish debugging. Give them a couple days to rest, and then a couple more to make the move. No sweat.
While I agree that no one should be forced to spell or grammer-check if they don't want to, /. would really benefit from spellchecking as an option. I would love to use it on posts (I hate composing in emacs, vi, what-have-you, and then cutting-and-pasting).
It's not so much that I want to see Taco or Hemos or Katz or any particular poster spell-check. *I* want to.
I'd like to see a version where users can (warning, you're now entering Quark's! Buyer beware) purchase moderator points. I think that mod points are a form of quickly-expiring currency, and since I spend all day selling (or giving away) a currency based on the filthy yellow metal, I'd like to see an exchange market.
Will this lead to abuse, be imperfect, "censor" the poor, and cause other problems I'm not smart enough to foresee? Yes. I'll admit that. But OTOH the current system of randomly? assigning mod points is sometimes abused, is imperfect, awards NO points to those too poor to be around computers, and probably causes other problems too -- without making a profit for Andover.net.
I don't particularly care about Andover.net, actually (to see my attitude change 180 degrees, give me some shares) but it would be nice if sites like Fairtunes.com could sell something virtual for my currency (or others). If someone wants to do this and needs a bit of gold to play with, you need only contact me.
Flame away, mod me down, etc.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Just think... you could update the fortunes to related quotes...
"You've had too much to drink... or... too little - I can never remember how it works with you."
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Is the thing where if you go to a topic that's been pulled off the DB and onto .html 'cause it's old, have they removed the login from that page as it doesn't serve any purpose bar pissing me off!
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Laptop006 (RHCE: That means I know what I'm talking about! When talking about linux at least...)
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
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Is there any plans to support other DB's, not that mysql isn't sufficient, I'm just wondering aloud about what path Slash is going to take.
Otherwise, keep up the good work!
Well they clearly say slash is designed for a million hits a day. Not really for use when co-hosted with other apps, It swallows all system resources, just like the best games, in order to give itself best advantage when the going gets tough.. Quite valid thing to do.
Sounds to me like you're trying to squeeze a square peg in a round hole.
EZ
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Personally, I'm against the idea of "karmaless comments", if only because trolls will start using them to spam the hell out of slashdot and be able to do it without losing karma. Basically this means that trolls can post at 1 with their logged-in account instead of 0 as AC, thus making the rest of us have to start browsing at a threshold of 2. OTOH, "karmaless comments" might be a good idea if they started at 0; this would allow users to claim ownership of a post (i.e. to defend themselves against a troll) but not allow them to troll into higher scored thresholds.
If the meaning of a posted story is obvious, yet it has a few small spelling mistakes, who cares?
...and has a variety of improvements for users and administrators alike
For example, the new SlashTag <goatsex>, which saves you the tedium of having to do all that HREF and HTTP:// stuff.
...and an Oracle version has been floating around for awhile...
Heh. No offense, but something tells me most people running slashcode aren't using Oracle as their backend, unless it's on a *very* internal server,
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I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
So once this is installed can I change my Name back to "Ungrounded Lightning Rod"?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
One feature I'd like to see is something that'd make it easier for me to write a script to parse the main page and extract information about the stories there. While RSS XML lets me see story title, I'd like to be able to easily parse a few other things like the date the story was posted (this may be there now, I forget), the number of comments on the story posted so far, and preferrably, the number of comments rated at a certain moderation level.
That's what *I* see when I go to the main slashdot page. But that's not what RSS gives me and it turns out to be kludgy to write a client tool that does all the right pattern matching for all other slash-based but not slashdot sites.
Just my $0.02.
--LP
First, lets tackle your claim. Your argument is that "he should, because it is right".
/. stories are time sensitive". Right, things like Viruses, Worms, Microsoft vulnerabilities, new kernel releases, all have no time sensitivity. None.
That is 100% your *opinion*. Some find the casual nature of this site to be a strength, a drawing point.
Some would argue that it shows that you can be inarticulate, inaccurate, and "unprofessional", and yet own/run the most powerful and popular nerd portal on the net today.
"And its not like
"It literally takes a few seconds".
That part, sure. How many stories have to go by legal before posting? How many stories do they reject (in previous interviews supposedly anywhere from 50->150 to *one*). How long does he spend coding the next release of slashcode, a story that you COULD be commenting on, as a momentous occasion..?
You insult him, you attack him, and the simple truth is *YOU* just dont get it.
A group of geeks brought a single weblog to the top 100 websites *IN THE WORLD*, and you complain about how they do things?
He answered your comment DIRECTLY in the story. If you want that level of professionalism, GO TO CNN. There is a reason it isnt here. He has *BETTER THINGS TO DO*.
Whether YOU rank those higher or not doesnt matter one itsy, teeny, little bit.
If you want that level of professionalism, go build your own weblog, work on it for years, release new versions open source, get millions of readers, AND spell check, AND make a living doing it.
Until then, get your sorry, offtopic, whiny self out of this bastion of bad spelling and great news.
Real men code, Real men run websites, all others just CRITICIZE.
Where is your 2.0 release of code running one of the most popular sites on the net?
Oh right, you were too busy spending time criticizing. To some, its a matter of pride to code, to run a website. You give off a strong impression of sloppy opinionated rants.
But thats just my opinion, and I state it as such.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
I think I know some people who might disagree with you there. I know you're really proud of this software, but let's not be assholes, okay?
Geez, you might at least give the quote in context, which does not make them look like assholes at all:
" . . . other weblog software available for free, and written by us, and codenamed after a cartoon . . . "
You say "Slash reduced it to about 4MB free". Question: how are you measuring "free" memory?
;^) of which 8123K is free. However, most of that memory, 506M to be exact (to 3 significant digits base 10) is being used to buffer the disk system.
Are you sure you aren't making the fairly common mistake of misunderstanding how a *nix machine uses memory? The natural state of any *nix machine is to have very little "free" memory: that which is not in use by processes is used to buffer the disk system. For example, the system I am using this very moment has 640M of memory (and that should be enough for anybody
Could it simply be that Slash touches more of the file system, causing the disk cache to consume more otherwise idle memory?
Or, were you indeed reporting the combined totals of free memory and disk cache memory?
www.eFax.com are spammers
I got your redesign right here!
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Is it named after Slash Gordon?
Is there somewhere where you list what hardware/software mix you're using for ./ ? It looks like Slash supports a mix of dbs but what works for this kind of traffic level?
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
But Rob et al can do both! They can get the message across and do it properly. All it takes is a few seconds. I'd understand if they posted a hundred stories a day, where each minute counts, but they're not. They have the time. All they need is an editor to clean up the text right before it gets published. Or just proofread it and make corrections. They make it sound as if taking out 10 seconds is way too much, which is bullshit.
The irony is that these are the same people who complain about the education system in America. Well, contrary to their delusions, they are part of the problem, not the solution.
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Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
As for that "go to CNN" reference, what is wrong with taking out a couple of seconds to correct errors that you already know? Don't you even have one shred of journalistic integrity? Don't you want the rest of the world to take you more seriously? You spend hours every day working on Slashdot, week after week, and you can't even bother to remember that "a lot" is two words? It's like spending $100K of hard-earned money on a Ferrari, but not bothering to keep it clean.
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Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Yeah. Looks like they're lagging way behind.
Also, ODBC? I hear it scales _really_ well. Doesn't CPAN have any Perl modules to natively connect/execute stored procs? I thought it had everything?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Has anyone started using Slash 2.0 yet? It would be nice to go ahead and see what changes we can see from the interface standpoint. I know most of the changes are in the code, but I am sure there are some changes to the look and feel...
FoonDog
It's fun with new code, but does it work any better?
http://www.millnet.se/ GO/U d- s+:+ a C++ UL++++ P- L+++ E W+++ N+ w++ M-- PE+ t+ X++
Will the new slash fix the apparent 50 karma cap?
When ./ moves to 2.0, I wonder if we're finally going to see a redesign of the site.
Other sites that run slash like Plastic and Slashcode have a much nicer and slicker interface. I especially like how plastic says how long ago each article was posted. Also things like having your karma displayed on the front page is nice too.
-Cire
No, you are just a dumb dumb head...Bad guy! Bad guy!
-- "You used your dictaphone to post, didn't you?"
It reminds me of some AC who was trolling with the ASCII version of goatsex.
Ugh. *Shivers*
But what if this tag EMBEDS a picture to the post?
"Wireless : LAN
Thanks for the idea, macdaddy. I think it would be the best use of the
"Wireless : LAN
Why not have a contest where people submit redesigns, the /. staff and/or registered users vote, and the winner's designed gets implemented?
Here are a few suggestions about moderation:
Remove the +2 karma bonus. I don't think the quality of the comments justifies it, and it would make a cleaner separation between moderated and non-moderated comments. To the extreme, even the +1 karma bonus could be removed
In the archived discussions, only >= +1-rated comments are retained, although there are a lot of 0-rated comments which are of the same interest. To solve this, one could remove the karma bonuses (see above), or implement a "final review before archiving" by volunteer moderators.
Xavier
Do I make sense? Please report if not.
Add the following moderations: "good links", "bad links", "wrong information"
Allow readers to ignore certain types of moderations (Example: good links & funny)
Allow users to turn off the field: "related pages"
Show the number of times each article has been read (This way we can see how popular Mr Katz really is)
anyone have a clue as to the effort required to port this to postgresql? i know, i know, 'why would you want to.' well i already use postgresql for a lot of things and i don't want to have to run two databases on my machine.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
Guess I'll need to patch my sig ... damnit.
Well, really, this was what we call a "reading comprehension test", and given that I'm at +4 right now, I'd say that the general /bot audience is failing pretty badly...
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Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
Ah well, I was already on my way down when I posted that... I've got plenty more Karma where that came from!
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Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
And does it have a nice interface?
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If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Jesus, am i the only one who noticed 1984 in the size of the article?
( Read More... | 1984 bytes in body | x of x comments )
Now, if this were an Apple, or even an M$ story, then it would make sense. (or would it... hmm)
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Don't eat your soul to fill your belly.
conesus.com
Whats that sound?......its my Karma slowly sinking....
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Who started that, anyway? I know RedHat and Debian have been doing it for a long time, and my Klingon programming language (yeah, plug; bitchslap me, my karma's maxed out) var'aq has been using it for a while as a form of slavish copycatting.
/Brian
Which one of these people is most responsible for the new SlashCode?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
What's the deal with every software project having to come up with a code name for each release. RedHat 7.1 = Seawolf? Slash 2.0 = Bender? Sagan, BHA? I mean, what's wrong with calling it Slash 2.0 from the start?
Maybe the code name is to avoid public embarassment. Say for example two Developers are discussing code at dining place, saying "2.0" or other such numbers is sure to catch the ears of those sitting nearby. People will start glancing towards then quickly away, muttering things like "what are those geeks talking about". It can get real ugly.
They call it Bender so when they talk about it in public, no one knows what they're talking about and no one really knows they're geeks. It's really sneaky when you think about it.
Of course, thier cover is blown is they start talking with Recursive Acronyms!
Who ate my pie!
That gives you everything except the comments. If you want reduced bandwidth on the comments, try light mode.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
> What's the deal with every software project having to come up with a
> code name for each release. RedHat 7.1 = Seawolf? Slash 2.0 =
> Bender? Sagan, BHA? I mean, what's wrong with calling it Slash
> 2.0 from the start?
It's just honest. Version numbers imply than things are ordered and
that the 2.0 version is somewhat greater than versions with smaller
numbers. You can't draw connections between two names and this is the
true relation between most two releases.
At the beginning was at.
Aside from any practical value it may have, it's fun. When you sit down to work on "Slash 2.0", you think of another revision to a piece of software. When you sit down to work on "Bender", you think of a self-centered alcoholic robot, and that makes you smile.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
that Rob is a Debian fanatic are there debs or any plans to make debs?
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
"and written by us, and codenamed after a cartoon."
somehow I doubt that kuro5hin was written by Rob and crew or that is is codenamed after a cartoon. So Rob's statement was %100 right.
Taking a quote out of context does not work so well when the original is being displayed in the same window and can be cut and pasted into a response. Now go to http://www.m-w.com and look up the word "humor".
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
From CT's article, it sounds like it was a big clean up of code, but will this new /. with the new slashcode look much different?
/. has needed a facelift for a long time, IMHO.
/.'ed inquiring minds want to know about the changes. Especially about moderation and karma changes (did ya remove the cap??).
Since the site is, ironically,
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
PHP is a great language, but there are a couple minor problems. While PHP is an Apache module, you can't actually write other modules in PHP.
:)
ahem, yes you can
With any PHP-based solution, you have to hit the DB every time you want to get anything dynamic.
You must not have a clue how slashcode works, or you have never heard of database caching.
Also, psuedo-compiled versions of Perl modules are stored and re-used in Apache. PHP scripts have to be interpreted every time they're accessed. Unless, of course, you use the Zend optimizer, but it is not open source.
You may also be thinking of the Zend Cache, or the Alternative PHP Cache, which is open. You really need to check your facts before you bash on PHP.
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Hammer of Truth
Using a working code name for an upcoming release, gives the developers the opportunity to decide what numerical value to assign to it. To make a long story short, it leaves room to call it whatever you want. As a developer, I have often used a code name for the project.
For example, if the current release is called 1.0.4, the next release might become 1.0.5. But sometimes I make so many modifications, that instead of increasing the revision, I might increase the minor, in this case it would be 1.1.0, or if there has been a huge amount of changes, I might bump it up to 2.0.0.
On another note, congrats to the Slash crew.
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
Is there a built-in Spellcheck???
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Spelling mistakes just give out a strong impression of unprofessionalism and slopiness.
Dude, I know exactly what you mean. If they would just take the time to proofread their posts, they wouldn't spell simple words incorrectly, use "to" when they should've used "too", or drop a letter from a word.
Sadly, they don't.
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Freeper Logic
If you're still uninitiated, all the 2.x versions of Slashcode are named after characters on Fox's Futurama - gleefully created by the folks who made the Simpsons. (psst - it's a secret)
So you're a karma whore, eh? For the right price, I'll be a karma pimp...
SIG: HUP
Did you notice the two admins? The great granddaddies of trolling.
sulli
RTFJ.
More like "fitting", I think.
- Ando
It gives the release an attitude ... And this attitude helps to remained focused on what's most important to the code at this point in its life.
The simple reason is it is a lot easier on the developers to refer to it by the code name. When you are working on something a lot it gets annoying to have to keep quoting version numbers, the version numbers are easier on people in the outside world but internally it is easier to have a code name. Plus as an extra added bonus coming up with names for stuff is fun, so this way you can do that for every version instead of just the first
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
Is it faster?
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Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
..And this on the Readme:
Is it time to update the readme file?
OK Ok.. Enough nit-picking - Congratulations.
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Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
Are ther plans to move Slashdot to using XML in the near-mid future? This could potentially dramatically reduce bandwidth requirements for viewing stories, as the banner and page-formatting codes could potentially be transmitted only once per session, as well as reduce processing for the /. server.
I suppose a built-in grammar-check is too much to hope for. Then again maybe CT's comma key is broken.
--
--hongpong.com
Who discusses code at a 'dining place'? Real Programmers eat from the vending machine.
I was KIDDING!
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Has anyone fixed that bug that automatically gives John Carmack a +5 Informative whenever he talks about anything? Or, at least substituted his name in your string tables with "wrinkledshirt"? Just wondering.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Ironic don't you think? Slashcode.com got slashdotted.
I didnt get a chance to get to the slashcode site, so can anyone tell me if there are user supported themes?
Are you on the Sfglj (SF-Goth EMail Junkies List) ?
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
I'm curious as to it's theming abilities. Other slashdot articles have hinted, but what exactly can it do in that department?
The truth about Michael
Slash is nice and all, but it doesn't seem to work well if you have to do ghetto-style computin'.
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on first load. It seems slashdot is slashdotted.
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Take a gander at the new RSS 1.0 syndication support. Slashcode make full use of the format's extensibility framework via Dublin Core and its Slash module.
Point your browser at http://slashcode.com/slashcode.rss and enjoy!
To parse the RSS 1.0, simply make use of XML::RSS, the module that generates it within Slashcode in the first place. RaelWhere I come from we use the codename "dining place" to refer to the vending machines.
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"Fuck your mama."
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McCarrum!
Robert Anton Wilson