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.
When is the IIS version coming out?
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.
Plans are already well underway to move Slashdot to the new code base soon enough.
Two words: Beta site?
--Jim
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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Seeing as how (bizarrely enough) slashdot seems to have slashdotted itself, the actual code can be had on sourceforge: here
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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'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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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.
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 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.
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
Will the new slash fix the apparent 50 karma cap?
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.
Why are they pushing it? Sheesh, you don't remember when Rob was being called a child-molester every 15 minutes until he released the
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.
So he released the code and has had his minions working to rewrite it and has now released it to the public.
Now you are moaning about him 'pushing' it. Give me a freekin break!
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There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
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!
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.
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
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
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...