System Downtime, Maintenance

We're taking the system down tonight for a some system updates. We expect to go down around 9 (eastern) and hope to be back up by midnight. This is a pretty substantial upgrade, but the changes are almost entirely 'Under the Hood' type fixes: architecture stuff that shouldn't really impact much end user functionality. When the dust settles we expect there to be a few bugs cropping up, so please click that 'Bugs' link on the left hand menu and submit reports so we can squash them quickly. And sorry about the inconvenience. We know it will be hard to live without us for a few hours, but I figure some quality time with your friends and family might just be long overdue! (Also, for the curious, a brief summary of what the change is actually all about follows) Ok, so when I wrote the original code for Slashdot, I had these "Sections" and these "Topics". You're familiar with both I'm sure... the "Sections" are like "Apple" and "BSD". They have unique color schemes, and their own homepages. The "Topics" are specific areas of subject matter... you know them because they each have a colorful little icon associated with them... like for example the rockin 'Slashdot' logo that is attached to this story.

When I originally "designed" (I use the term loosely since evolved is more accurate) the system, "Sections" were meant to be for "Data Types"... for example "Book Reviews". A book review is fundamentally different than a Slashdot "Article" because it has extra fields like the ISBN code. At the same time I essentially coded "Skins" because each "Data Type" needed custom look & feel type stuff so that the story could actually display the unique data fields.

So when we created YRO and the BSD section and later on the Apple section, I just reused the skinning part of "Sections".. it was the easiest way to do it, but it created problems later: under the old design a story could only have one "Section"... some sections defined "Data Type" and others defined "Subject Matter" (like Apple or BSD)... thats why bsd.slashdot.org can never include a book review, and apple.slashdot.org can't include an 'Ask Slashdot'. This confounded users of our search page to no ends, to say nothing of frustrating editors who couldn't include topical stories within their appropriate section.

Undoubtedly we'll see some bugs to pop up... so please be patient and submit bug reports. We'll be wacking bugs for a few days... there's always a few of them that don't pop up until you put them in front of the half a million users on the real hardware. Thanks for understanding!

Comments

9 eastern?

[lecithin]

Thanks for the advanced notice!!!!!

Re:9 eastern?

[oudzeeman]

slashdot isn't that crucial to your Friday night, is it?

Re:9 eastern?

[spirality]

We should hope not!

Re:9 eastern?

[maxbang]

Are you kidding? This is worse than having all six suns setting for the first time in thousands of years. I have no choice but to watch Stargate: Atlantis and finish the other half of this pizza feast. Fatter, yes. Completely insane, also yes. Plans for Friday night, of course not.

Re:9 eastern?

[LostCluster]

If they post a lot of stories after Midnight tonight to bump this off the home page, and all goes well... I'm guessing a majority of the /. userbase won't even notice the site went down to begin with.

Re:9 eastern?

[ModernGeek]

You mean advance notice, and 10 minutes should be plenty, just hurry up and cache a bunch of stuff before it all comes crumbling down.

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonymous Coward]

mmm, google cache will let me surrive this slashdot outage

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Anytime *I* have to take anything out of production for our 1500-odd users at the company I work at, they require *AT LEAST* 12 hours notice, if not more. Usually, we give 24.

What gives, /. admins?

Don't worry, I'm sure /. will credit your subscription somehow.

What's that?

You're NOT paying for it at all?

Well, shut the fuck up, then!

Re:9 eastern?

[xiang shui]

You're not serious, are you?

Re:9 eastern?

[holysin]

and the difference between a production server at a COMPANY where you WORK and a FREE service where you play is nonexistant 'eh? Go outside and greet the real world, you might learn something new.

Re:9 eastern?

[Squareball]

I wonder if the subscribers get the downtime before the rest of us?

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not serious about him not being serious, are you?

Re:9 eastern?

[Brightest Light]

I don't see a subscriber * next to your name, so why should they have to answer to you?

I understand its a common courtesy and all, but I for one am glad I got *some* kind of notice. I'm used to sites being down for a few hours, and THEN coming back up with a "hey we went down for maintenance, etc etc" message.

Re:9 eastern?

[ahknight]

Even if, we still have Stargate Atlantis and Fark, so we'll live.

Now, take my Fark and we'll have words.

Re:9 eastern?

[Pharmboy]

Oh, I almost forgot, while slashdot is down, you should check out this homestarrunner "system is down" message.

Trust me.

Re:9 eastern?

[iabervon]

The story was submitted a while ago, but you know how long it takes for the editors to get around to posting stuff...

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"slashdot isn't that crucial to your Friday night, is it?"

I wouldn't call it crucial for myself in particular, but I am working a late night. When you're paid by the project instead of by the hour, entertainment is precious. It's kind of like settling in to watch a TV show and it's cancelled due to breaking news that Martha Stewart was sentenced. Blah.

Re:9 eastern?

[Darby]

The beauty of this site.

A Super Computer Researcher busted Lecithin for even freakin noticing that maintenance is going on.

Call me a geek, but I think this place is pretty cool

Darby

Re:9 eastern?

[Darby]

t I for one am glad I got *some* kind of notice. I'm used to sites being down for a few hours, and THEN coming back up with a "hey we went down for maintenance, etc etc" message.

Oh, You got a maintenance message?!? In my day, we'd reload and reload (Yeah, you try that on an ox cart) and we'd consider ourselves lucky to get a 404.

Bah, kids today.

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting that a bunch of geeks has something better to do on a Friday night?

Re:9 eastern?

[empaler]

I actually *did* have plans, but my nap ended up being too long, so I stayed home instead. Stupid slashdot. Stupid soft bed - I should've been out, hitting on one of the hottest girls I know! (Her boyfriend be damned!)

Re:9 eastern?

[lecithin]

Naw! :) Lecithin's wife just got home after a few days away. For some reason I figured that I had a first post and this was the best I could think of at the time. I do enjoy slashdot and I appreciate the work that people do to make this site possible. -daniel

Re:9 eastern?

[empaler]

We used to DREAM of being able to reload...

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonymous Coward]

Homestar Runner's 404 page is pretty amusing, too.

Re:9 eastern?

[ottothecow]

I tried to cancel a free AOL for broadband account (signed up to get a deal...never installed) and the man on the phone couldnt find me. He then informed me that the database was down for security upgrades and would be out for at least the next 48 hours.

WTF kind of company lets their customer database go down for days at a time and doesnt even have techs who know about it (he first rebooted his computer to fix it, then used another computer, then asked his supervisor).

I just want to cancel my frickign account!

Be glad slashdot isnt like that :)

Re:9 eastern?

[Pathwalker]

What's more likely is that the phone reps are penalized for canceling accounts, so he made up an excuse to get you to call back on a day when he wasn't going to be working.

Re:9 eastern?

[Hungry Bear]

I suffered through it. I work 3rd shift and Slashdot is what makes time go by at night. I was lost, bored, had to do actual work until you came back online.

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: Class action lawsuit.

Yes, I know that's three words and you're not a class. But this is slashdot so it doesnt matter.

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, nice reference! Fairly cheered me up.

Re:9 eastern?

[LostCluster]

That is most likely it exactly. The only phone reps who are allowed to cancel accounts in most mega-company setups (AOL, credit card issuers, insurance firms, etc.) are people who are specially trained to try to talk you out of canceling, and statistics are kept on how well they perform. A person who calls, gets to the cancelation reps, and doesn't actually go through with it is scored as a "save", and various metrics are computed to determine the saves per time worked, number of calls taken, etc. and compared to the company averages or arbitrary metrics.

I think the grandparent poster just encountered somebody who was lying about being unable to process the cancelation so that they'd be given a save in order to boost the numbers. I don't think top-level management would approve of such a tactic, but it's certainly possible a mid-level manager would "look the other way" about his "star performer"...

Re:9 eastern?

[carterhawk001]

i used to go to shool with the one of the original homestar voices, his cousins back east do it now.

Re:9 eastern?

[goon]

damn plugins ... (requires shock) :(

Re:9 eastern?

[Burpmaster]

This is worse than having all six suns setting for the first time in thousands of years.

Five suns. The sixth sun didn't set, it was eclipsed.

Nerd!

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonymous Coward]

Crashed my Firefox!

Re:9 eastern?

[It'sYerMam]

Hey, at least you had a web browser. We didn't even have telnet - we had to shout the GETs down the 'phone line and then listen for an answer. If we were lucky we had paper to write the result down on so we could work out what the site looked like.

Re:9 eastern?

[Frambooz]

mine too!

Re:9 eastern?

[surprise_audit]

Might have been nice if the site could have been redirected to a static page explaining what was going on. Their ISP could probably have hosted it.

Re:9 eastern?

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

Flash must have been a bitch!

Re:9 eastern?

[ebh]

Some things aqre truly universal.

Like whining users, for instance.

Re:9 eastern?

[Jonathan the Nerd]

Hey, at least you had phones. In my day, we had to carve the HTTP commands into rocks and throw them at the server. Then we had to get under cover before the response rocks started flying back. What was even worse was that sometimes the rocks would collide with the neighbors' RFC1149 carriers and we'd both lose packets.

Re:9 eastern?

[It'sYerMam]

We could only use flash when the imps were in - they were the only ones who could draw things fast enough.

Re:9 eastern?

[jesboat]

Ya want to know what I would have done? (Don't answer that.)

I would have used annoyed and stern tone, and told him, "Alright then. What's your name? [Write it down.]] I want to cancel my account; and I don't want to bother calling you again. I have no intention of paying anymore, so here's what you'll need to do: you'll need to write my name and account information down on a Post-it note, and when the database comes up again, put the cancelation through for me."

If he told me I needed to be on the phone, I'd say tell them (that they already have my phone number on file || what my phone number is) and to call me sometime. When [insert times I'm not likely to be sleeping.]

That'd show them!

Re:9 eastern?

[It'sYerMam]

Well, while we're in that period, you had it easy!
We didn't even have rocks - we had to sacrifice someone for every packet, and throw the dead body, with the information inscribed on it in blood. It could cause havoc with the new fangled automated servers - if the body tumbled mid flight, from a collision or something, then it could fly in the wrong way. I heard tales of the machines trying to extract header information from the footer... not pretty.
This led to many downtimes, of course, with the plagues - potential infested packets were dropped, and if one was missed then it could take the entire server down.

Re:9 eastern?

[Sloppy]

you'll need to write my name and account information down on a Post-it note

I'm sorry, sir, but the pencils are currently down. We have a tech coming out to replace the sharpeners tomorrow morning.

Re:9 eastern?

[Pharmboy]

yea, i know it requires plugins, which is both good and bad. What gets me, is all the people spewing venom (not talking about your polite comment) about how flash sucks, and how it only supports 98% of all operating systems, blah blah blah, when it appears to me that if someone can install BSD, then they can probably install a dual boot system for all the other things they can't run. If they feel that anti MS, fine, then pirate a copy of 98 so they can REALLY screw MS. Not like its hard. I run about a dozen different OS's, so I know its not that damn hard.

The entire homestarrunner.com site is flash, and much of it is pretty good (especially if buzzed) if a bit amateurish in some ways. Great visuals, very good voice, mixed writing. Its worth installing flash on Linux/BSD/whatever, even if it takes a few extra steps.

If they didn't use flash, they couldn't do the stuff they do, active games, totally interactive menus, etc. with html, and god knows cross support for Java is screwed up thanks to MS.

Re:9 eastern?

[Pharmboy]

I'm sorry, sir, but the pencils are currently down. We have a tech coming out to replace the sharpeners tomorrow morning.

That was actually pretty funny, and at least somewhat accurate. I personally find that being abusive, rude and cussing a lot speeds up the process since they don't want to deal with you. I mean, what are they going to do, cancel your account? ;)

Re:9 eastern?

[Tet]

If they didn't use flash, they couldn't do the stuff they do, active games, totally interactive menus, etc. with html

Actually, they could do pretty much everything. Interactive menus? Not desirable in the first place, but easy enough to do with CSS if you really want to. Strongbad could be done with any movie format, and needn't be in Flash. The only part of the site that doesn't really have an option at the moment is the interactive games. Yes, there are alternatives to Flash for that (Java, SVG, etc.) but none of them are ubiquitous enough to be a valid choice at the moment. Maybe in a few years, but not now.

Re:9 eastern?

[Pharmboy]

dont forget one other important aspect of flash: its fairly easy to use, built libraries with, etc. I don't know if you have ever used it, but I bought MX a couple years back for some projects (than have since been switched to gif files) and found it very easy to build content with. From my experience, you can be very productive with it. Less time, more content. That is one reason people like publishing with it.

Re:9 eastern?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, they're going to NOT cancel your account and make you pay $30/month until you call back and act like a rational human being.

Re:9 eastern?

[goon]

Its worth installing flash on Linux/BSD/whatever, even if it takes a few extra steps.
might just have to install the plugin. It's a bandwidth issue downloading the begger.

Re:9 eastern?

[unitron]

Nah, that would have made too much sense.

Re:9 eastern?

[surprise_audit]

Oh, shoot, what was I thinking... I gotta stop posting when I'm tired...

oh no...

[the arbiter]

I'm a geek! What am I to do until Slashdot returns?

Well, I guess I'll just have to go outside, or talk to a girl, or something...

Re:oh no...

[FyRE666]

I'm a geek! What am I to do until Slashdot returns?

Set up a mirror? ;-)

Re:oh no...

[Anonymous Coward]

"or talk to a girl"

A what?

Re:oh no...

[LeahofRivendell]

"Well, I guess I'll just have to go outside, or talk to a girl, or something..."
Outside? OOOHHH you mean the poorly-climate-controlled blue room with the daystar!
"After-tax corporate income is at its highest level since 1929. Here's a test...what bad thing happened in 1929?"
A famous stock analyst predicted that the great depression would be over in the next year....exactly one year before it reached its depths.

Re:oh no...

[PiGuy]

Wow, you guys should do this more often. During the time Slashdot was down, I found a girlfriend, got a secure, high-paying job, learned to ski, and seamlessly integrated KDE and GNOME into the Next Big Thing(tm).

Re:oh no...

[novafarm]

I hate to respond to a sig, especially since I'm not sure of it's veracity. However, the crash of 1929 didn't have to do with corporations holding on to their earnings, but a lack of safety nets in place on the market as well as rampant speculation (quite like the irrational exuberance of the late 90's). The economy is getting better and has MANY controls in place in this post Enron/Worldcom/etc Sarbanes-Oxley world.

Cheers

Re:oh no...

[kesuki]

Well, i did find a girlfriend/potential future wife, but 3-4 hours wasn't long enough for me to find a job, or write the next great american novel... KEEP up the good work slashdot!

Re:oh no...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you are both guilty of looking at it too narrowly. There are so many factors involved that any particular one or two doesn't mean much.
But, for a bit of perspective, I'd suggest you go to BigCharts and take a gander at the complete market history of the charts for all the major markets. That enormous collapsing bubble you see on all those charts would suggest the pessimists have an interesting case. These things take decades to develop and they take decades to unwind.

Re:oh no...

[smoothwallsamuel]

Easy, you could install windows, that should take about that long...or you could do something interesting and look at smoothwall http://www.smoothwall.org

samuel

Re:oh no...

[TopShelf]

Well, I guess I'll just have to go outside, or talk to a girl...

Most readers here would need a published API for such interaction...

Re:oh no...

[Quasar1999]

But why is the getLaid(void *) call just a wrapper to the kissAss(), suckUp(), and payBribe(LARGE INT) calls???

Re:oh no...

[eugene ts wong]

I don't know, but it must be mentioned in the source or in the article. Try man pages & google. Maybe Source Forge? :^/

Re:oh no...

[ameoba]

Girls are the consumer model of those creatures you see in your porn.

Re:oh no...

[Kili]

# man man
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

#

Re:oh no...

[Footsienabackyard]

This time, when you go out, try not to make it a store(gas station) clerk. Make it a challenge! Then after your feelings are sufficiently crippled, Enjoy Your Model Railroad!ACJ. www.Trains.com

At least...

[example42]

At least it's night time (here) so I can go outside to play. The evil burning brightness is gone for 8 hours.

Re:At least...

[nahdude812]

It's not my fault your world orbits a ball of fire.

Re:At least...

[eugene ts wong]

Sometimes I wonder if nerds are just vampires without girl friends. :^/ ;^)

As for me, I'm not afraid to go out. I just prefer not to.

Re:At least...

[pete-classic]

Yes, yesss, precious. Yellow face is gone. White face all dark tonight! A good night to play, preciousss.

-Trahald

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Uh oh....

[Kymermosst]

20,000 nerds are going to have to find something else to do for three hours...

Re:Uh oh....

[Anonymous Coward]

I fell your pain. Damn, Shark Week isn't on for at least a month.

Re:Uh oh....

[Kpt Kill]

Just jam on refresh until the page comes back

Re:Uh oh....

[Anonymous Coward]

no no no no, jeeeeeeese ill do it right...

[sw mode on]
20 thousand nerds yelled out in terror then SILENCE.
[sw mode off]

Re:Uh oh....

[zeylisse]

worst... ..news... ..ever!

Re:Uh oh....

[Lord_Dweomer]

" 20,000 nerds are going to have to find something else to do for three hours..."

Isn't it usually right about now that the Autopr0n guy shows up to plug his site?

Re:Uh oh....

[notanatheist]

did that. Didn't catch the headline about the page being down because I get off work at 6pm PST which translates to what? 9pm EST darn it! Refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, go rest my bum knee for a couple hours and come back. We're back and live folks. Scare a geek to death why don't you. I feared Slashdot was /.'ed.

Re:Uh oh....

[Anonymous Coward]

20,000 funny rainmen across the world suddenly began rocking back a forth muttering "Definitely not right. Definitely something wrong. Gotta load slashdot."

Re:Uh oh....

[Anonymous Coward]

autopr0n?

you mean like thehun?

Re:Uh oh....

[xigxag]

And in other news, world supplies of petroleum jelly were dangerously depleted last night.

NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

uh oh, no /. for 3 hours! I might have to actually interact with people in meatspace! say it ain't so!!!

Re:NO!

[sqrt(2)]

LMAO, meatspace, how did you come up with? Did you make that up? Sounds like something off ATHF.

Re:NO!

[Finuvir]

Meatspace

Re:NO!

[fader]

My lungs are adapting! I've inhaled a roast

Edit?

[Psychotext]

Don't suppose you're going to add editing posts as an option are you? Ah, no - Didn't think so, it's only 2004 after all!

Re:Edit?

[Star_Gazer]

Editing posts is evil! It may seem like a good idea for fixing that stupid typo or the wrong link, but it usually ends in deleted/edited posts where people just don't stand up to their words and nobody can follow what the reason for the discussion/flamewar was.

I see it all the time on other discussion forums, it's no fun!

Re:Edit?

[hattig]

I wouldn't mind an "Add a footnote to post" option though. Just append a small note to the bottom. like "Doh! Misspelt 'gerbil'! I always do that!"

Re:Edit?

[athakur999]

That's why all posts should have a CVS like system to view changes, much like Wikipedia has for their entries. Because Slashdot just doesn't require enough resources to run as it is.

Re:Edit?

[Alsee]

A lot of the time you just want to fix a typo or broken tag moments after posting (even when you *did* use preview).

So how about only allowing edits so long as the post has not been modded and no one has replied yet? As far as I can see that avoids every objection to editing posts.

-

Re:Edit?

[Yorrike]

Or get rid of the circa 1997 layout.
I mean, tables? C'mon!

For a site that's constantly running stories on how people should switch to Mozilla and the like, they've decided to keep compatibility to Netscape 3.0.

No geek runs a browser so old that they have to rely on tables for layout. Get with the program, /.

Re:Edit?

[sqrt(2)]

There is a good reason that you can't. A troll posts an insightful/interesting/funny post, gets modded up and then changes a link to goatse. Since it's +5 a few people MIGHT be tricked before it gets modded down as a troll.

Re:Edit?

[trs998]

I like that idea. Now, do i reply in support or mod you?
I was thinking of allowing edits if the post is less than 10 minutes old or something, kind of like a second chance at the preview button.

Re:Edit?

[mooingyak]

You'd also need something in place to check if a post you're replying to has been edited since you clicked on the 'Reply' button (or the 'moderate' button) so that you don't get this sequence:

Poster: "I like dogs!"

Another poster clicks reply, and starts to type.

OP clicks edit, and changes to: "I like sex with dogs!"

The 2nd poster now clicks on submit with "It's good to find someone with the same interests as me."

Re:Edit?

[jonadab]

> Editing posts is evil! It may seem like a good idea for fixing that stupid
> typo or the wrong link, but it usually ends in deleted/edited posts where
> people just don't stand up to their words and nobody can follow what the
> reason for the discussion/flamewar was.

It seems to work fine on perlmonks.org. (Okay, so perlmonks also has a more
advanced moderation system than slashdot, which probably helps. Still.)

Re:Edit?

[Psychotext]

As other suggest - How about only allowing editing until your comment has been moderated or someone has posted a reply. Real, real simple.

Re:Edit?

[Psychotext]

Again, only allow editing until a comment is moderated or replied to. Is that really so difficult? Nope!

Re:Edit?

[Gherald]

"Sorry, you are not allowed to edit this comment. Either someone has replied, or it has been moderated."

Re:Edit?

[Star_Gazer]

Yes, it is simple, but that means one may be unable to fix that typo after two minutes, when the first reply or moderation comes in while others have hours or days. Of course, if no one replies there is little reason to edit, but still.

The best solution appears to be the history function mentioned by athakur, but I never dared to look how this is actually implemented by wikipedia and how many resources are used by that.

The footnote option is, IMHO, not better than just replying to yourself with a correction or and additonal comment.

Re:Edit?

[eugene ts wong]

...or maybe a header to give an update. This will allow the reader to skip the entire document before reading it.

Re:Edit?

[CableModemSniper]

The best solution appears to be the history function mentioned by athakur, but I never dared to look how this is actually implemented by wikipedia and how many resources are used by that.

cvs, patch and diff? (Kidding!)

Downtime...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to add, "Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of computer monitor radiation have left
your genitals withered and useless."

Re:Downtime...

[Anonymous Coward]

Break the LCD's before they start spawning again...

Re:Downtime...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, not the case here... heh

Re:Downtime...

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked just fine when I was whacking off to anime porn.

Re:Downtime...

[bettlebrox]

Could be worse!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=15 17&e=1&u=/afp/romania_health_offbeat

BUCHAREST (AFP) - A Romanian surgeon who underwent a fit of madness while operating on a man's testicles proceeded to amputate his penis and cut it into three pieces ..

Mega Ouch!

Re:Downtime...

[prockcore]

Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of computer monitor radiation have left
your genitals withered and useless.

I know this is a joke, but considering that my wife and I haven't used any sort of protection in over 3 years and still no kids, I have to wonder.

My swimmers must be too busy programming.

Re:Downtime...

[DMUTPeregrine]

Hey, I have lead underwear you insensitive clod. Amazing how adding "you insensitive clod" makes the posting take longer than 20 seconds. It also helps to stand on your head.

Re:Downtime...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wear boxers not briefs (gotta keep your balls cool, man), don't wear skintight trousers/jeans, don't carry your mobile phone in your front trouser pocket, don't stand close to the microwave, DON'T jerk off the day before sex, make sure you're using the right hole (yeah, I know, but some people...), make sure your wife isn't secretly on contraceptives or enjoys eating stuff that has incidental contraceptive effects, don't ride bicycles (seriously, the saddle fucks your balls up even if it doesn't hurt), don't drink or smoke weed (drinking will make bad sperm, but you might end up with a doofus child which might be worse than none at all, weed will slow sperm). AVOID COFFEE, YOU WANT SPERM THAT CAN SWIM STRAIGHT!

Re:Downtime...

[Computerguy5]

Downtime - You forgot to add, "Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of computer monitor radiation have left your genitals withered and useless."

Brings a whole new meaning to the term downtime.

Question....

[Lurch Kimded]

9pm eastern... Whats that in GMT? ;)

Good luck with the upgrade, I hope Sod and his law stay far... FAR away.

Re:Question....

[hattig]

that's like 2am dude ... or 3am .. who knows what those weird people over that large ocean use.

By that time you should be only a couple of hours away from thinking about going to bed. Enough time to spend browsing userfriendly archives or coding your own content management system to rival slashdot.

Re:Question....

[mackstann]

eastern is GMT-5 I believe.

Re:Question....

[scum-e-bag]

1am Saturday morning... I think... so this means you have about 10 mins. I could be wrong, daylight savings always gets me.

Re:Question....

[Siva]

well, yes, but where in Daylight Savings right now...so GMT-4

Re:Question....

[hattig]

It's 1.55am in the UK already, dude!

Err, dude! Damn 20 second posting limit. What am I meant to do? Like, type random crap to take up the time?

Re:Question....

[Siva]

argh...
s/where/we're

that's what i get for not using Preview.

Re:Question....

[SagSaw]

0100

Re:Question....

[mackstann]

Ah, I actually never paid attention to how daylight savings effected gmt offsets (and was somewhat confused about it, but not enough to go look it up), so thanks for telling me. I'm in central so I'm gmt-6, and gmt-5 during daylight savings. /me commits to memory

Re:Question....

[epsalon]

Because the UK is in daylight savings time...
UK TIME != GMT.

Re:Question....

[NoMercy]

9pm is 2am, in the UK... eeep that's now!

Re:Question....

[hattig]

Only somebody in the UK would be asking what the time was in GMT, even if they really meant "What is the time in BST?".

Re:Question....

[PugMajere]

The european naming scheme for the time zones is easier to remember - for example, London is on British Summer Time right now, as opposed to GMT. Since the change follows the rule "spring forward, fall back", the difficult is just figuring out which is the 'normal' time zone.

Re:Question....

[Basehart]

It's 10:28 PM here in Seattle right now - that means it's after 9:00 PM here.

Re:Question....

[Karora]

It was my immediate thought too, and I'm about as far from England as it is possible to get...

I think that this means that 9:00pm eastern is 1:00pm for me. So presumably this has already happened now...

Re:Question....

[mikael]

Right on - I wondered why I was getting Error: 503 - Site not found every time I tried to visit slashdot.org

Re:Question....

[dotwaffle]

UK time != GMT+1 at this time.

It is UTC+1. GMT != UTC.

Oh God....

[XeRXeS-TCN]

No Slashdot for a few hours? Oh God, nooooooooooooooo! *starts refreshing once a minute until it comes back* ;)

Nah seriously though, it's cool that you're updating the software, a few new bugs is a good trade off to get the software cleaned up and all the new stuff added

See you when the site comes back up ;P

Re:Oh God....

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah seriously though, it's cool that you're updating the software, a few new bugs is a good trade off to get the software cleaned up and all the new stuff added

Seriously though... you must be new here.

Especially if you think any new features are going to be added, or the broken pagination algorithm fixed.

Re:Oh God....

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously though... you must be an arrogant ass.

Be sure to do a backup

[Neil Blender]

Just kidding.

Bad timing

[GuyMannDude]

We expect to go down around 9 (eastern) and hope to be back up by midnight.

Oh that's just great. Now what the hell am I supposed to do with myself on a Friday night? Go downtown and watch all the cool people on their dates?

Couldn't you guys have scheduled this downtime for sometime during my work hours so I could actually get something done at the office for a change?

GMD

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

*Stargate

Maybe I should use the preview buttom someday... maybe..

never thought i'd get to say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

last comment

Re:never thought i'd get to say it...

[daeley]

Don't get too excited, this story will have a dupe by Sunday. ;)

Re:never thought i'd get to say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone hear that Slashdot was down?

Real Life Test

[Duct Tape Pro]

This is really a test to see if real life's servers can handle all the slashdot users trying to interact with it at once.

Re:Real Life Test

[Bloodlent]

So we're gonna go Slashdot the park?

Re:Real Life Test

[http]

No, not RL servers - Quake servers! (which also have RL's ) I got killed so many times, and they were crowded.

So, what are the changes?

[Star_Gazer]

Taco, all you do is describe what the current design (step of evolution) is, but what are the changes?. Obviously, you will have removed those restrictions, but you don't say so. :)

Re:So, what are the changes?

[Pharmboy]

I think it means we are the beta testers, and the goal is to make it LOOK and feel the same, just different mechanically.

Believe me, anytime something isn't working right, you can just grep through the comments and find all the complains and debugging information you can stand.

"wacking bugs"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what you call it, eh?

Tsk.

How about upgrading to valid html?

[kevin_conaway]

And re-doing the layout in proper css?

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already been done, but no one wants to actually update Slashcode.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Anonymous Coward]

And re-doing the layout in proper css?
You must be new here.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[DAldredge]

They can't even add in a fscking spell checker, don't expect any major changes till they need to sell /. to another corp.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[jamie]

A pair of coders who use Slash are being generous with their time and effort, and working on migrating Slash to XML... we hope to work with them soon to get their work into the main Slash distribution.

Migrating a whole site to XHTML is much, much harder than doing a mockup of one page.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want Slashdot to implement a spell checker? Konqueror has it built in, and all the other major browsers I'm familiar with can have it installed via third-parties.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, cool. About damn time! I hope the project gets some time on the /. front page.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[DAldredge]

Cool! Have you ever thought about selling /. or subscriptions or having ads to pay for work like this? ;->

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[ValourX]

Actually, Slashcode does work nicely with ispell... in the backend.

-Jem

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[IntlHarvester]

Any chance we can get the raw XML?

(Could care less about the HTML fads, but a data interface would be nice.)

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[WWWWolf]

Any chance we can get the raw XML?

You can already get RDF if you really want, not sure if that's enough for you...

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Anonymous Coward]

Migrating a whole site to XHTML is much, much harder than doing a mockup of one page.

Absolutely no offense, but that sorta surprises me. Doesn't it say something about design of the entire system?

One would think that a system like this would be designed so that the HTML generation is seperated out well enough so it can be easily replaced.

Is this a problem with the environment (I guess Perl in this case)? As in, does the environment make it hard to split HTML generation from code?

This is really interesting to me as I've looked at a couple of PHP projects and I was surprised to see the HTML generation being so intertwined with the code. Seems very hard to maintain to me.

Not having done any significant web development myself, I would really like to know if this is mainly coding style, or if it is really platform 'enforced'. In case of the latter I'd like to know if there are platforms which are better than others.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Nurgled]

I have a feeling my grandparent poster wanted a machine-readable interface to the whole site, including comments, journals etc.

While that's great in theory, I know from experience that it just ends up inviting even more badly-written bots which mess up caches and hammer the site for ten minutes at a time because their authors are too incompetant to implement their own caching and stagger their requests.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[DougWebb]

It's not the environment, it's the way Slash evolved. I've got a similar problem at my job; our web product started small, at a time when we were a smaller company without the 'Design and Plan and Review first, then Build it' mentality. Then it got big and popular, and lots of new stuff was grafted on, and there was never any time to rebuild it with a proper design.

I've read the Slash book, and looked at the code a bit, and I can see that the same thing happened. Just like with my product, Slash needs a proper redesign and a complete rewrite. That's a LOT of work, but once it's done, any future large-scale changes to the output will be much simpler to implement.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spell checker built in? nothing personal, but this is incredibly stupid to even suggest when it would consume 10x more resources and bandwidth than the system does now, AND there are plenty of ways to spell check on the client side, most for free. My guess is that you don't do any programming work, or you would know how much CPU cranking it would take on the server side.

Personally, if I am not sure of the spelling of a word, i google it or dictionary.com it. Its really not that hard.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Fweeky]

Why XHTML? Is there something wrong with HTML 4.01? Just because XHTML's newer and has an X in the name doesn't mean you should use it over 4.01 Transitional/Strict in most cases.

I certainly won't be impressed if Slash just moves to serving XHTML 1.0 + Compatability Profile as text/html; that's just taking for granted the robust HTML parsers browsers have developed :/

HTML 4.01 Strict + CSS is as valid and as clean as XHTML 1.0 Strict + CSS; moreso if they're both served as text/html. 99% of sites which use (or pretend to use) XHTML are probably better off just sticking with HTML. Can anyone give me a convincing counterargument? Please?

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[jamie]

The two guys who are doing the conversion don't work for VA Software / OSDN, they are doing it for their own reasons. One actually started on HTML 4.01 and then they decided to join forces and work on the same project, and chose XHTML instead of 4.01. So you'd have to ask them as to why. Stop by #slash on irc.slashnet.org if you want...

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[tf23]

One would think that a system like this would be designed...

See DougWebb's comment. I think he nails it on the head with regard to the evolvement of the code.

One would think that a system like this would be designed so that the HTML generation is seperated out well enough so it can be easily replaced.


That's been being worked on over the past year (maybe more?)....' Get the rest of the HTML out of the code and into the templates'.

It's (imho) very nearly done. That work is largely what's enabled people to begin work on new themes (html4/xhtml).

All help appreciated, obviously. Submit a patch and help out if you can spare the time.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[jamie]

When it's done, it will get 100% of the time on the /. front page :)

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we should give this guy some helpfulnessment so that the future evolvement of the code will be better because of a community effortment.

What Will I Do?!?!

[Senjutsu]

You monsters, you're forcing me to find something else to waste my time doing!!!

Add a frickin linkchecker

[norculf]

Duplicates are getting out of hand.

Add a spellchecker too.

Isn't tonight Stargate Atlantis?

[antdude]

Watch that during the downtime if you can. Of course for me, I don't have cable/satellite TV. So feh! :(

Re:Isn't tonight Stargate Atlantis?

[LostCluster]

For those with digital cable or satellite tonight... MLB Extra Innings is running free preview games to promote the chance to subscribe now to the rest of the season at a reduced rate. So, there's a few channels most of you don't normally get to see on tonight. :)

Re:Isn't tonight Stargate Atlantis?

[Fiz Ocelot]

Yes it starts at 9pm here, can't wait :)

Bugs?

[ghost1911]

>>Undoubtedly we'll see some bugs to pop up...

I think you meant unintentional features, some popular operating systems support this (alas the current slashdot system does not). We'll be sure to fondly appreciate and notice these as they appear.

Couldn't you have waited until Doom3 came out???

[Anonymous Coward]

No one would have noticed the outage.

"Thank you...."

[Anonymous Coward]

.... for "keeping" us "informed". I'm sure "some" of us will "have some trouble" finding "something to do" with our "spare time".

XHTML Compliance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this has been done to death, but when will Slashdot ever move away from HTML 3.2 and join the real world with us cool XHTML and CSS people? A List Apart had some good ideas a long time ago, why haven't any of these been implemented?

Re:XHTML Compliance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you haven't done it yet.

Oh crap. Oh crap.

[i love pineapples]

I didn't get the chance to get my slashdot fix at work and now you're telling me the server will be down tonight? I can feel the shakes coming on already... maybe I can scour my cache files to keep my withdrawal symptoms down.

So... cold...

Aw come on :(

[happyhippy]

I was about to launch my DOS attack on /. at that time!

Kill a few more birds with that stone?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot/

hmm.. stargate?

[LWolenczak]

Atleast we will have stargate to keep us from crying without slashdot. mmm slashdotty goodness....

Amnesty?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will there be a general $rtbl amnesty?

yea but

[Pharmboy]

What about the people who don't log on until 9:05? Is this story going to help them ? ;)

Re:yea but

[Basehart]

Here's a mirror for those who try and access /. while it's down.

Re:yea but

[shawn(at)fsu]

No it didn't help me.

I was wondering if perhaps /. got /.'ed which made me laugh a little on the outside, inside I cried.

Double Posting

[wideBlueSkies]

I wonder if this story will be double posted.

More interestingly, I wonder if ie is posted again, will they take the servers down for another upgrade.....

wbs.

Re:Double Posting

[mnewton32]

At least if there's a duplicate posting in the next few hours, we have an excuse to 'please click that 'Bugs' link on the left hand menu and submit reports'
I can see it now: "There seems to be a bug causing old stories to reappear on the homepage..."

Forums?

[gumpish]

How about adding some plain old forums, eh?

Re:Forums?

[Anonymous Coward]

No forward slash? Forward slash is reserved for those moments when you say "slash" and the idiot at the keyboard types a backslash. Anyway, stroke and backstroke is easier to say and lends a continental flair.

Good Timing

[dgagley]

Hey, this is good timing. New Star Gate SG1 and Atlantis is on tonight.

WoooHooo!

Quck question

[Anonymous Coward]

Just when will /. be down... in Japan? I forget what timezone it's in.

Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just enough downtime to enjoy a good wank.

Evolved...

[Prof.Phreak]

When I originally "designed" (I use the term loosely since evolved is more accurate)

Heh. I've just been outside reading ``Emergence'' by Steven Johnson, and there is a part about Slashdot.org, and how it ``evolved''. Kind of an interesting time coincidence :-)

7 minutes to go *sob*

[GillBates0]

*sniff*

I guess I better go and get some beer. I'm going to miss you /.

I love you, please come back soon :(

Re:7 minutes to go *sob*

[wideBlueSkies]

Are you talking about Jennicam or /. ?

wbs.

Crossing my fingers

[MooseByte]

"We're taking the system down tonight for a some system updates. We expect to go down around 9 (eastern) and hope to be back up by midnight.".

If I had stock options for every time I'd tried that and ended up having to scurry in a panic through the weekend... Oh wait, I'd still be broke. Nevermind.

Best of luck guys!

Not the longest /. downtime this year...

[LostCluster]

Slashdot went out of service for roughly 24 hours centered around April 1 in the GMT zone... they still posted stories and allowed comments, but the normal Slashdot service wasn't there. Check the archives if you can if the site is just static tonight.

So, Slashdot will be down.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I may just head over to the JBoss forums to spend my weekend. JBoss offers proven open source solutions that are a step above anything available today. Face it, the competition is crap and JBoss is the only Company to offer a viable solution. I do not work for JBoss.

sync; sync; re-bored.

[Anonymous Coward]

:o)

I'm sure

[mikeg22]

I'm sure you will have no problems. Upgrades always run smoothly.... ;)

Good luck, don't pull out too much hair!

Re:I'm sure

[Anonymous Coward]

arghhh last comment yet?
its all gonna be quiet.

someone get on some irc channels and say something!
i need something to stop me actually thinking about the wonders of this world (or absence thereof)

How many page views / unique IDs per hour?

[dgmartin98]

Hey CmdrTaco,

How many page views & unique users does Slashdot get in a typical day or hour, anyways? I've always wondered that but never knew.

Dave

Woo hoo!!

[k4_pacific]

Lsat Psot!!!

Slashdot Business Plan

[GreenHairedDave]

1. Create incredible community and commonwealth of information and news for nerds.
2. Shut down server to fix botched code.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!111One

There's still hope! SouthPark Marathon!

[GillBates0]

starts at 9pm EST! Yay!

LP?

[zoloto]

Last Post?!?

The Cries

[phreak03]

And suddenly it was as though the screams of millions of Nerds went sillent....

Last Post!

[Staos]

Last Post!

Re:Last Post!

[Staos]

aww... Now I'm gonna get the -1, Redundant. I am soooo unoriginal...

Freedom

[CHaN_316]

At last! We can break the tyranny of CowboyNeal! We can finally unplug from slashdot and be fr.... what's that? It's back up? Okay nevermind... back to the powerplant people, nothing to see here!

Last!

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

Re:Last!

[Anonymous Coward]

more last!
lastest!

Yay!

[eruanno]

Wow, last post :-) John 3:3 - [Jesus Christ] must increase; I must decrease.

List psot

[Anonymous Coward]

list post.

Oh yeah, and read the article morons. Or something.

Oh, and Taco and Hemos are gay lovers.

GNAA rocks

What am I missing to make this a standard last post?

Re:List psot

[Anonymous Coward]

What am I missing to make this a standard last post?

FreeBSD's last days are at hand.

While you're at it...

[Anonymous Coward]

... you might as well fix the bug where comments become are skipped in paged mode when a thread has more than the maximum number of visible comments per page. The next page then repeats the supersized thread, instead of showing the following threads. The page after that continues with threads further down, not the thread directly following the supersized thread.

What to do for 3 hours without slashdot?

[britneys 9th husband]

Some ideas...

- Watch one of the LOTR movies.
- Watch a Harry Potter movie.
- Drive across the Bay Bridge (god I hate traffic)
- Fly from Austin to Boston
- Send a message to your friend (5400*3e5) km away and wait for the response.
- Spell/grammar check your copy&paste trolls (GNAA members only)
- Sleep

Better post this before 6 :-)

not much time

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god I had enough time to get a comment in before slashdot went dow

CARRIER LOST

Google cache...

[DarkBlackFox]

Wow, never thought I'd have to use a Google cache for Slashdot!!

Re:Google cache...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea, but it's outdated!

F U

[Anonymous Coward]

LAST POST

Shashdot will be slashdotted!

[noidentity]

This time, Slashdot will get a taste of its own medicine as it's Slashdotted at midnight when it comes back up from the upgrade (and then goes back down). The fact that it's a Friday night will have little effect, given the audience.

Re:Shashdot will be slashdotted!

[Anonymous Coward]

STILL not down?
this is crazy, its all for a mad collecting of advertising revenue as we try to get last ps0t.

Re:Shashdot will be slashdotted!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. I don't see the ads. BTW, lsat psot.

Seriously

[Brightest Light]

I think he's serious about the other guy not being serious, but are you serious about him being serious about the other guy not being serious?

Re:Seriously

[xiang shui]

Dead serious.

Re:Seriously

[tylernt]

In Russia, they seriously need a Beowulf cluster of ... this was going somewhere.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, it's all dead serious. It's a dead country after all.

Re:Seriously

[gujo-odori]

In Soviet Russia, the dead serious you.

There, I did it! After years of resistance, I finally gave in and made a "Soviet Russia" post :-p

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, seriously.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

There, I did it! After years of resistance, I finally gave in and made a "Soviet Russia" post :-p

after being modded troll, i am betting it will be a long time before you do again, lol.

Re:Seriously

[gujo-odori]

Good thing you didn't have money on that bet.

I'll probably be modded troll, but (now watch, that will make me get modded up :-) ...

In Soviet Russia, the trolls mod you. Wait, they do that here on Slashdot, too. OK, in Soviet Russia the mods troll you. Wait, that happens right here on Slashdot, too. Guess I better give up :-)

And look! I even used my karma bonus!.

Phew...

[csguy314]

You can take down the site now. I just used up my mod points... -1 Flamebait for everyone!

Re:Phew...

[britneys 9th husband]

Thanks for clearing that up. I was wondering where the flamebait mod came from. I really didn't intend that as flamebait/trolling, honest.

Re:Phew...

[Anonymous Coward]

You were most likely modded down because of your home page, not because of your post. BTW, LP.

Re:Phew...

[csguy314]

Well, to be fair, I didn't mod your post as flamebait. I just modded down a few bad posts. But it's ok, my karma is so high, I get mod points several times a week. Far more than I know how to sensibly disperse anyway. :)

hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Not down yet...

STILL up.

[Anonymous Coward]

i demand my money back, how the hell are we supposed to get last post if the damn thing doesnt go down when its supposed to?

i bet first linky when its back up gets hammered.

Time to switch...

[3vi1]

This would never happen if they were running Linux.

What? Shit. Nevermind.

Exactly.

[cgenman]

I agree. Anytime *I* have to take anything out of production for our 1500-odd users at the company I work at, they require *AT LEAST* 12 hours notice, if not more. Usually, we give 24.

Do you have any idea how much of a disruption to the workflow at my company Slashdot going down is? If we don't keep the engineers distracted, they'll start interacting with the customers! The customers will be speaking to someone who knows something. Then the customer will know something. Then our business is ruined.

Thanks Slashdot. Thanks a lot. I hope you like your prescious backend update. In Japan.

It will be interesting to see what happens

[SteamyMobile]

Slashdot switching from mod_perl to a JSP/Servlet backend is going to be a very interesting change. It will finally put an end to all this "Java is not scalable enough" and "Java is slow" type of talk we see here.

If it doesn't work, then I'm guessing that Slashdot will move to the ultimate in stable, secure and scalable web architectures: ASP.net.

Re:It will be interesting to see what happens

[suwain_2]

I's possible I'm under a rock, or that I'm completely oblivious (it's like 3 AM, after all), but who said Slashdot's moving to JSP?

Re:It will be interesting to see what happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the poster was just trying to be funny.

Fortunately Taco and Co don't share that particular brand of humor.

"to no ends" (grammar nitpick)

[TimMann]

It's a pet peeve of mine that people keep saying "to no end" when they mean "no end", but "to no ends" is even worse and awakened the pedant in me.

Here's a rundown:

"no end" means "unendingly", which is what CmdrTaco meant here.

"to no end" means "with no goal". This is the same meaning of "end" as appears in the phrase "means to an end".

"to no ends" doesn't appear to mean anything.

Re:"to no ends" (grammar nitpick)

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

what a bunch of bull

[Anonymous Coward]

They are probably adding in some updated snooping software mandated by a secret fbi request that we can't know about because of the partiot act.

"Downtown for architectural updates"...shea right...just like when there is a plumbers truck outside fixing the neighbhors pipes for 2 weeks right before the raid...

How about fixing search?

[Anonymous Coward]

Search really sucks on slashdot... why not fix that as well?

And why the long downtime?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not obvious at all that this change should require extensive site downtime, beyond the short outage for an unpack-and-switch operation with the database down.

It's quite normal to have more than one schema active in the database at the same time, and indeed it's safer to arrange things that way since it simplifies regression if things go badly. Running parallel filestore trees for the old and new static parts is of course pretty trivial.

So, for the benefit of those interested in the technical reasons, what are you doing that requires long site downtime? Wholesale database data conversion from one schema to another maybe?

Re:And why the long downtime?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does MySQL support views?

Last Post

[ka9dgx]

I call last post!!!

--Mike--

Re:Last Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Try to be slower next time :).

Time::timelocal() says...

[gkwok]

The downtime will be between 1090026000 and 1090036800.

Slashdot down for 3 hours

[phalse phace]

No!!!

[ hits F5 for next 3 hours ]

last post...

[whitelines]

So I guess there'll be a new kind of race, that of last post...

It's a conspiracy!

[pyrrhonist]

It's all a conspiracy to force us Slashdot readers to do something constructive for three hours.

Well, I found a loophole in that plan.

*main screen turn on*

example.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, look! slashdot.org is now example.com!

First Bug?

[big_a]

Well, all the links seem to be going to "example.com"... (i.e. read more takes you to example.com)

Umm, you might want to think about...

[CapitalistAmerican]

...replacing example.com with slashdot.org somewhere in your coed. You know, just so the links on your site would work. It might be a nice feature to have.

I shoulda' read that advanced notice...

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't figure out what happened, and there was no Slashdot to check to see what was going on... I felt so... lost. Anyhow, it's good to see Slashdot back up and running!

I know what one of the changes was!

[JoeShmoe]

Someone apparently forgot to remove an "example.com" placeholder! It's good to see that slashdot hires people so well versed in RFC 2606!

( Read More... | science.example.com )

( Read More... | 91 comments | yro.example.com )

And so on...

- JoeShmoe
.

Re:I know what one of the changes was!

[X]

Yeah, I was impressed by this as well!

IANA pissed!

[tpgp]

I'll bet that IANA are not going to be happy about having example.com slashdotted!

See rfc 2606 for more info on example.com

(For those who missed it, after coming up from maintenance, all links off the slashdot front page went to example.com instead of slashdot.org - ie http://example.com/comments.pl?sid=114762&threshol d=1&mode=thread&commentsort=0&op=Reply )

Back up on time

[grolaw]

Well done!

Obligatory Star Wars Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel a disturbance in the force, as if a million virgins were crying out, then suddenly silenced...

WOW, Slashdot is teh sucks!

[cmacb]

I didn't know what to do, so I tried going outside!

It's DARK out there!

I'm just going to wait here and watch my screensaver while I wait for /. to come back.

Oh, wait, NM.

Re:WOW, Slashdot is teh sucks!

[sharkey]

It's DARK out there!

That's good. The yellow face, it burns us!

Slash is back!

[iisageek]

Horay! /. is back. I wandred around for 3 hours pondering the existance of god.

I Have a Bug

[Omega1045]

The games section still has its old skin.

example.com

[Mentally_Overclocked]

So who didn't change the config files and had us going to example.com? Heh.

Cheers

Thank god it's back up!

[bergeron76]

I've actually had to work for the past few hours.

[shudder]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Can't

[Anonymous Coward]

It's flash.

Re:Can't

[sqrt(2)]

Every major browser supports flash. Mozilla and firefox also have a flashblock extension to stop all flash from being played UNTIL you click on it.

Re:Can't

[Anonymous Coward]

What has that got to do with Flash being steaming monkey turd?

Re:Can't

[DrSkwid]

oh really

Here I am in FreeBSD using Firefox

I go here :

http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/dow nl oad.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

I get this message :

Macromedia Flash Player Download Center

We are unable to locate a single Web player that best matches your platform and operating system.
Please visit our table of recommended Web players. .

Please go read this page

http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alt er nates/

and revise your opinion on the ubiqity of Flash

Re:Can't

[drinkypoo]

google turns up a few useful-looking links on the subject of flash and freebsd. Nonetheless you're running a desktop which is marginal in popularity at best as a desktop OS and you're bitching about not having a supported version of flash player? Next you'll be complaining about a lack of mozilla for the atari 800.

Re:Can't

[DrSkwid]

Apologies if you're retarded or something but ffs can't you read. You, like so many people, are so insecure in the world that the ability to discern observation from complaint seems lacking. Too bad for you, without observation there is no learning.

The poster was alluding to the ubiquity of Flash and that making a website with flash was fine because it was supported by *all* major borwsers. This plainly is a falsehood, my FreeBSD desktop is proof of this, in and of itself.

The last thing I would do is bitch about lack of Flash on my chosen platforms, I'm fucking ecstatic about it.

Re:Can't

[Aeiri]

The poster was alluding to the ubiquity of Flash and that making a website with flash was fine because it was supported by *all* major borwsers.

Yes, all major browsers are supported. He never said anything about all major OS's. Firefox on BSD is the same browser as Firefox on Linux, sure the plugins might not work, but that doesn't make it a different browser.

Re:Can't

[Anonymous Coward]

CRY ME A RIVER.

Man, which is it? You have to be an arrogant fuck to use BSD, or using BSD makes you an arrogant fuck? Flash is supported on most platforms, 98-99% of people. Why don't you just bitch that you can't use "MS Streets" too? Ok, you use BSD, you are L33+, blah blah blah. Next time, just don't go to a flash site instead of bitching about how the 172 people who use BSD can't use flash. We don't care. We have already figured out that the only reason you use BSD is to have a reason to fucking whine.

Now go install Linux as a dual boot or something useful, because the rest of us do NOT care about your hardships using BSD.

Re:Can't

[DrSkwid]

you are a fuck tard

I don't *want* to use flash, I was just pointing out that assuming ubiquity is erroneous

jeesh, wanker

Slashdotting

[MaverickUW]

I didn't know what had happened. I was starting to wonder if slashdot had referenced itself and somehow experienced the slashdot effect

Apple design

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Looking at the apple page I think PC users won that flame war..

Re:Anyone else missing the Polls slashbox?

[Brianwa]

No, its not just you. I have no poll slashbox either.

Slashdot is down...?

[bigt_littleodd]

They prolly got slashdotted!

Oh, wait...

Bug found...

[atomic-penguin]

No "Bugs" link to my left!

Just kidding, made you look!

is this a bug?

[Redglare]

the BSD section appears to be dying.

Substantial Upgrade?

[ralfg33k]

We expect to go down around 9 (eastern) and hope to be back up by midnight. This is a pretty substantial upgrade

Upgrade? That sounds more like pretty substantial foreplay.

NP

[o0m]

no prob thanks for keepin us up to date over the years. Keep up the good work. -MIKE

slashdot downtime reports are terrorst blueprints!

[clambake]

just drop our geek information network and there is no telling what they will do.

I knew Karma would pay off...

[gwoodrow]

Thanks to my good slashdot karma, the only time I was busy today was from 9-midnight and entirely missed the blackout. I knew it'd pay off eventually!

Yesterday's news does not work here....

[Anonymous Coward]

When I click on "Yesterday news", or "july 14th" I always get the same today's news again... I tried with Firefox and Internet Explorer with the same result (yeah, I know, I shoul'nt use the later...)

Re:Yesterday's news does not work here....

[Erebus]

Doesn't work for me, either. Oh well...

Re:Yesterday's news does not work here....

[Anonymous Coward]

its fixed woohoo

yay Taco

[Geno Z Heinlein]

Thanks for upgrading the rss code. Now I don't have to load the RSS for all the subsections separately, because the main rss has all the stories.

Re:yay Taco

[Geno Z Heinlein]

... because the main rss has all the stories.

It looks like I jumped the gun... stories from "Games" don't seem to be in the RSS feed. Has anyone noticed any other topics missing?

Also, Slashdot moves a lot of information. I can get home from work and find the rss 'expired', so to speak. I think there should be more stories in the rss. Boing Boing has 30 in their feed, for example.

Right...

[Kynde]

"but I figure some quality time with your friends and family might just be long overdue!"

I noticed the "503 service unavailable" last night 5:37 am right before I was about to crash on our office couch. Had I known there'd been some quality time coming up I probably would've stayed home in the first place...

15 Minutes Warning

[rfc1394]

Those dirty rotten #*($#*%( only gave us 15 $#*(@ minutes warning before shutting the #*$% place down. I thought the place had been slashdotted or something, I wasn't able to get through. May they roast in hell for a thousand years with no Internet access!

Re:15 Minutes Warning

[isorox]

May they roast in hell for a thousand years with no Internet access!

No, too nice. May they roast in hell for a thousand years with internet access, but they have to use Internet Explorer!

Re:15 Minutes Warning

[rfc1394]

May they roast in hell for a thousand years with no Internet access!

No, too nice. May they roast in hell for a thousand years with internet access, but they have to use Internet Explorer!

You are a sick fuck, you know that? Even I'm not that sadistic.

Re:15 Minutes Warning

[isorox]

Yeah, it's the special level of hell reserved for child molesters and people that talk in theaters.

Bug?

[complete loony]

I can't seem to use the links at the bottom or right to see yesterday's stories. Can still search for them though.
Can someone raise this (cant be stuffed registering with souceforge).

Meatspace?

[MarcQuadra]

What is this 'meatspace' you speak of?

I had to disengege my ethernet-crainial interface and drink with friends profusely. Now all I've got to show is a bunch of mostly-empty glasses of jungle-juice and a few used condoms.

Fuck this, it wasn't worth it. Bring salshdot back!!!

(btw, took 15 minutes to write this, as I am tooo intoxicated.)

Re:Meatspace?

[mrbuttboy]

at this moment I share the state you had when you wrote this........I have heard of meat but have no truck with it....sound commie to me......

what does it mean when commie is not spell-checked??...or right...i just remembered,/. doesnt have spell check....

GMT Time Pls.

[earthstar]

NIce of you to give info n advance.
Jus for the sake of the Nerd's outside the US ( I mean the Rest of the world), do provide the GMT Time also, from next time onward!
yea,Iam from India. :-)
ah nerdies! dont say "Calculate the time frm eastern time!!" --

Re:GMT Time Pls.

[Anonymous Coward]

New York is five hours behind London, and it's on the Eastern seaboard of the US, so the eastern timezone would logically have to be GMT-5. Thus, 9 PM in New York would be 1 AM central European time (GMT+1), and about 5 or 6 AM in India?

ever notice...

[CAIMLAS]

Ever notice how when people say their system 'evolved' instead of being designed, they're just trying to make it sound neat that they didn't plan ahead thoroughly?

Re:ever notice...

[da2]

That or the system changed in order to be more suited to the changing enviroment (needs)

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't suppose anyone knows if the rip is on any of the alt.binaries.* yet is it? Some of us won't get to see Atlantis for months.

quiet outside

[goingtalkies]

reality got slashdotted for once

update bug

[blackest_k]

This is stating the obvious but there is now no link to take you forward or back one article at the top of the comments.

I guess this will be fixed but while its being fixed how about giving the same link at the bottom of the page too.

update the FAQ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the FAQ about Slashdot sections could be updated, what with no more "Articles" and a new "Index" section?

No, the correct text is:

[octogen]

"...I know that bug is gone, didn't you notice that we upgraded our systems at 10:35 a.m.?" ;-)

Slashdot slashdotted

[darkitecture]

I had no warning about this scheduled shutdown, so when I tried to load up the page and it failed, the first thing that flashed into my head was "Sweet Zombie Jesus, Slashdot's been slashdotted!"

I had all these images of newspapers like in the movies, where the front page of the New York Times and stuff has the article title in size 120 font, with such classic direct titles as "WAR!" and "ALIENS LAND" or "DEAD!"

Just imagine the front of the New York Times declaring "SLASHDOT SLASHDOTTED!"

Or better yet, "/. /.ED!"

Great

[Isbiten]

I was out having a nice time when Slashdot went down. I missed this holy moment when the holy site went down. From now on I will never leave the house.

My bet

[shimen]

in 9 months time birth rates well be about a min of 10% higher than now because of this down time

Re:My bet

[TheABomb]

Someone obviously never explained to you the birds and bees. There's a necessary prerequisite to childbirth that Slashdotters don't ever do.

(Before you get mad, I'm one of you, too!)

Re: "Saves"

[Anonymous Coward]

When I worked for DirecTV Broadband DSL, somehow 30 days before the end of each fiscal quarter our billing system would go down. So we'd be unable to process cancellations till after it was fixed which allways happened after the investors got the numbers back.

Strange coincidence huh?

Thanks :)

[KI4BBO.org]

Thanks for the heads-up, although I saw it to late, I checked back here around 10:00.. and got a services not availible error :P Oh well, at least its back now :D

Next time...

[HanB]

Please put up one page that explains that you're down and how long it will last. Little effort, great pleasure.

-- With a Henry Rollins song now in my head.

70 trillion

[farquharsoncraig]

70 trillion

Re:Atlantis

[MachDelta]

A few versions of it are already on Suprnova. One of the torrents is nice and hot right now too (400 seeds, 3600+ peers), so be sure to hop onboard if you want it.

Myself, I just watched it. Overall, i'd say its pretty good. I liked it, even if it didn't wow me very much. Its a refreshing change of scenery from SG-1, but still has that quirky Stargate feel to it -- random jabs of humour, primarilly supplied by the hillarious Scottish doctor (Beckett) and goofy Canadian scientist (McKay), included.

As a Canuck, I also appreciated the humour in the "Zed vs Zee" joke early in the show. I also later realized the irony of it: The "Canadian" character (McKay) who initiates the joke is actually British (David Hewlett), but two of the "American" characters (Dr. Weir played by Torri Higgson, and Aiden Ford played by Rainbow Sun Francks) are Canadians.

Oh, yeah, and theres a token hot/exotic chick for everyone to drool over too: One "Teyla Emmagan" (Rachel Luttrell).


Man, I just might have to start watching TV again :)

Your sig

[Kenneth Stephen]

Firstly, your conclusion in your sig stopped short of what it should have said : 0.9999.. = 1 not merely 0.999 ~= 1.

Secondly, the proof of equality is much simpler. 1 - 0.9999.... = 10 raised to (- infinity) = 0. Therefore 1 = 0.9999....

Re:Your sig

[duffel]

0.9999... = 3 * 0.3333... = 3 * 1/3 = 1
I think we're going slightly offtopic here, though. ;-)

Re:Your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

well, the decimal system is broken... because it allows infinite repeating of a decimal to represent a fraction.. note however that if you use .3334 to represent 1/3 that it's .0002 off, but it doesn't have the same = 1 effect. We teach our kids how to do math with a broken system, by teaching them broken rules, so they don't realize that fundamentally, it's wrong to even use decimal notation for a fraction...

new source of revenue?

[whathappenedtomonday]

Employers all over the world start paying Taco for taking the system down on a regular basis during work hours?! That gives a whole new meaning to DoS...

Big Boys?

[DrSkwid]

Sorry bud, I'm a man not a big boy.

From your other posts it sounds like you are a Windows user, which invalidates most of your opinions of OSs off the bat.

Bad Luck.

Re:Big Boys?

[sqrt(2)]

...which invalidates most of your opinions of OS's off the bat.

I could say the same thing about YOUR choice of OS. I use windows because it's widely supported, works with all my hardware, and plays all my games. Why do you use Free BSD? Probably because you think your sticking it to "the man" and being rebellious. When your OS of choice can't run something as basic as flash, it's time to change. Fuck, you could eve change to a good Linux distro, even that would be better than the POS you're currently using.

Re:Big Boys?

[DrSkwid]

See, you are ignorant. EOT

Re:Big Boys?

[DrSkwid]

lol, I'm embarassed to have even been talking to you.

But i'm a tell you punk, you gets none of mine
Cause I was taught, see a fool, use a fool
By the niggaz who terrorized the old school
So don't try me or buy me a beer
Just stay off my dick nigga,
And tell yo bitch to come here.

Hospitals Slashdotted in 9 months?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you suppose in 9 months the maternity wards will get "Slashdotted" like what happens in a blackout?...oh wait, what am I thinking?

This is much better!

[fmaxwell]

I'm so glad that Slashdot finally made the switch from Windows 98 to Windows98 Second Edition. I expect that this will make thing run much more smoothly.

Re: tables

[sczimme]

Or get rid of the circa 1997 layout. I mean, tables? C'mon!

If the tables work - and continue to be rendered correctly in multiple versions of non-broken browsers - what exactly is the problem? The /. site seems to be quite reliable and quick to load; what functional issue would be resolved by moving away from tables? (Your opinion of tables is not considered a functional issue.)

Change for the sake of change isn't always helpful.

IT speaks volumes

[mindstrm]

about professionalism when slashdot is upgrading, and instead of a nice, slashdot-style page coming up saying "The system is down for maintenance".. we get a big, ugly HTTP error.

Re:IT speaks volumes

[Anonymous Coward]

about professionalism when slashdot is upgrading, and instead of a nice, slashdot-style page coming up saying "The system is down for maintenance".. we get a big, ugly HTTP error.

a) Who cares
b) If there's an HTTP error to represent the fact that slashdot is unavailable, why not use it?
c) In case you haven't noticed, slashdot isn't all that pretty in the first place.
d) What you are talking about has very little to do with professionalism and more to do with aesthetics. There is a difference. The fact that they waited until the last minute to announce it says more about their professionalism than an HTTP error.

Re:IT speaks volumes

[/dev/trash]

What about 503 Service Unavailable, is big and ugly.

What are the actual changes?

[aled]

CmdrTaco describes how the system WAS, what changed from yeasterday??

We know no such thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

..."We know it will be hard to live without us for a few hours..."

Some of us won't find it difficult at all. Get over yourself already.

wtf

[cpuenvy]

I just got out of the hospital... I went to visit /. last night, and I saw a dreaded http error... I suffered a seizure, while my hand was on my penis. Not a pretty site.

I will be sending you a bill, along with my severed penis...

redirect page

[niktheslick]

Where was the redirect page?? I was all wondering if slashdot got cracked.

curse you, 12-hour clock.....

[hta]

9 AM or 9 PM?

will my daily fix disappear in 10 hours 30 minutes, or 12 hours sooner, which is..... wait, that's obvious, isn't it?

Forget that I asked, please....

Re: tables

[Anonymous Coward]

Greater accessibility for people with disabilities? Better scaling to non-standard interfaces, such as text-only browsers, cell phones, and PDAs? The ability to more easily "skin" slashdot, simply by changing the relevant css? The fact that, because there are essentially only two different kinds of layout on /. (front page and comments), the css would be cached and would therefore require that clients be server less information refresh, both decreasing server load and time to client?

The fact that tables were not designed to be used as a layout system, but rather were meant to tabulate data, and this unholy marriage of structure and content greatly decreases the accuracy of browsers, because they have no way of knowing whether a table is a table (excel/gnumeric style) or some glorified layout scheme?

CSS renders faster? Sometimes (often) much faster?

Is that good enough, or do I need to go on? Technology moves forward for a reason. It isn't that we web developers don't like tables, we just like them to be used as tables.

Alignment problems with Mozilla seem to be fixed!

[debest]

The bug of the main body of text occasionally running over into the left menu section seems to have been rectified. I know I've seen others who have noticed the same problem with Mozilla.

I've gone into dozens of articles and page refreshes, and everything looks correct now.

Thank you. My "F5" key is forever grateful!

Yesterday's News?

[Pan T. Hose]

Has anyone noticed that the Yesterday's News feature is broken? What's wrong with that? When will it be fixed? Is this bug vulnerable to malicious exploitation?

Re:Yesterday's News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yesterdays news, plus previous days don't work for me either. Looks like there are no new articles. But you can still use the search page to see all old posted articles.

no doubt!

[OS24Ever]

I speant 20 min troubleshooting my internet connection thinking something was wrong with it to be getting 503 errors allt he time. It didn't help that other sights I usualy check out were slow, must have been all the people looking for something else to do.

Re:Alignment problems with Mozilla seem to be fixe

[smagruder]

That's funny... I'm still seeing that bug on the first load of the Slashdot site using Firefox.

First Post

[unic1]

And the race is on. Who gets first post on the updated system.
Start hitting those refresh buttons folks.

We all know the real reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a lot of extra time to duplicate all those stories!

Not possible without locking

[abirdman]

The problem with allowing editing of posts before they're moderated or replied to is there's no way of knowing when someone's actually started to reply. That would require the server to lock the post as soon as someone hit the "Reply to this" link, until they either submit or cancel (timeout, whatever) and the reply/moderation is saved. Since it can take a few minutes to type a reply, and several more if the preview option is used, this would impose huge locking overhead. Then there's the problem of making an appropriate choice of a timeout value: If it's set too short, then slow (or long-winded) typists would be penalized by having their lock removed. Too long and it would tie up the comment in a locked state even when the poster decides to just browse somewhere else, disconnect, or otherwise just not finish their reply.

I guess it would be possible to set a flag when someone hits either the reply or moderate links and check the flag before allowing someone to edit their comment. This would eliminate the database lock overhead, but it would still add a good bit of code devoted to tracking the status of the flag: Is it set? Has the comment/moderation that set the flag in the first place actually been saved? How long has it been since the flag was set? What if someone clicks a comment link, sets the flag, and takes all afternoon to finish her comment and then submit it? If the flag has timed out in the meantime, should Slash discard the comment? Inform the user that the comment has changed? And this doesn't address the issue of validating which users can edit which comments (though that would probably be simple, using the existing user validations). With thousands of users reading, commenting, moderating, and replying, I think adding the option to edit comments as well would add huge overhead and slow everything else down.

I guess I would go along with the suggestion to add a little "P.S." box to a post, but even then it would be possible to change the post enough to invalidate the contents of any moderations or comments.

All that aside, I'm glad /. is up and running again, and it may be crazy wishful thinking, but it seems more responsive and seems to render better in Firefox as well. Woo hoo!

As long as you are preforming enhancements...

[The Breeze]

Can you also include the YEAR in the Date / Time posted section of the article? It's a pain to do a search on obscure stuff, find a slashdot article that seems relevant, but have no idea what year it was actually posted...

This shows a lot.

[juuri]

Hey slashdot guys if you wonder why you don't have jobs in the Real World(TM) this post shows exactly why.

Your planning, as usual was, poor. Your communication terrible. Again you ignored the features your users (ie your paying customers and AD viewers) actually wanted and finally you fixed changes that should have been fixed long ago.

Fortunately for you guys slashdot has such a critical mass of tech eyeballs you are insulated from your own incompetence and unprofessionalism. I'm sure someone will come along and clamor "but th1z is r0b'z personal site!!@" which might have been valid four or five years ago. Mostly I am just disappointed that the typical slashdot reader and worse, editor, is so ready to settle for this. Don't you editors want to be really proud of your work? Don't you feel a responsibility to your users? Your actions certainly seem to say "who cares?".

AvantSlash or /palm sucks

[Double0fro]

This "upgrade" seems to have killed all the wonderful goodness of AvantSlash. Its the only good way to read /. using AvantGo. Help please. http://www.fourteenminutes.com/code/avantslash/

A link to "Bugs"?

[Anonymous Coward]

That Taco dude wrote:

"When the dust settles we expect there to be a few bugs cropping up, so please click that 'Bugs' link on the left hand menu and submit reports so we can squash them quickly."

I looked for the "bugs" link on the left side but for the life of me, couldn't find a link to Microsoft *anywhere* on the left side!

API published for talking to girls!

[AnotherScratchMonkey]

Dating Design Patterns, previously reviewed here.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

same as it ever was

[Doc Ruby]

Wait, that description, while "+1, Interesting", doesn't say what you changed to. So I guess now we'll just get used to poking around, seeing if there are any GUI changes, any structure changes. You don't mention if you're releasing the new Slashcode, and there's no mention of this upgrade in the obvious place. So how about a followup, maybe a slashback, or something useful during a longer timeframe than the downtime itself?

Professionalism?

[sparkz]

I visited /. when it was down - for the first time in a few days.

I got a "503" message.

I'm sure OSDN can afford a simple webserver to serve a static page saying "/. is down from xx:xx to yy:yy - please vist after yy:yy," or even, describing the reason for the downtime.

Given the international audience, translating these times (or at least offering a link) would also have been a good idea.

If I got half the hits that slashdot gets, I'd post at least this much detail during the outage. As it was, my impression was "/. has been cracked / /. has been misconfigured / /. is run by a bunch of incompetent fools".

Looks like the third analysis was correct.

Given that you have the bandwidth, it seems fair to assume that even a single-CPU box with a a gigabit card could cope with serving up enough static pages to inform those who hit the site with an informative message.

Maybe next time, things will be done with a hint of professionalism? That's what your readers strive for, after all.
Anything less gives the impression that "the Linux folks don't really care about uptime, professionalism, presentation, image, or all the other things that corporates care about". Just my 2p,

Links on home no longer work for previous days

[Anonymous Coward]

the "Sunday" "Saturday" links for yesterdays (its "Monday" for me today) articles no longer work they simpley show todays links.
Though the url shows the date changing correctly

Re:Links on home no longer work for previous days

[Anonymous Coward]

its fixed, woohoo

Next time...

[cavac]

...please warn us in BIG LETTERS on the FRON PAGE a few days ahead before taking the side down.

I spent ten terrifying minutes in the router configuration (again, sigh) until i noticed, that it WASN'T the router that was down (again, sigh^2).

Seeing slashdot down is as shocking as seeing M$ filing for bankruptcy - although not that quite funny ;-)