Slashdot Mirror
Heapin' Helpin' Of Slashdot Notes
Customizable Homepages
Yes thats right, you'll be able to filter on Topic,
Author & Section. So if you only want to read Jon Katz
articles, or really only like Star Wars stories or something,
you'll be able to do that. The real wild card is
how much server strain this is going to cause. I'm
hoping that this will go live tomorrow (or maybe even
later tonight if I can fix some stuff).
Even cooler is a coming-rsn feature- ya know the big grey boxes on the right hand side of the homepage? Those will soon be customizable. If anyone has good suggestions for sites to import, let us know. We've done a few sites already (freshmeat obviously, Everything is coming soon). But this will allow you to ignore features, or polls or book reviews entirely, and hopefully provide headlines to a few other sites if you're interested. There also is a user defined box so you can stick bookmarks or something if you want. I've been testing it all day with a link to the Jennicam and GNOME.org and it all seems to be working. We'll probably have that publicly usable by the end of the week. And I have a box with a picture of Dust Puppy for no apparent reason. Its neat.
Hardware
The new hardware is holding up fine. Its load is easily
half that of the old box. We'll see how the new dynamic
homepage affects this. I think we'll be ok, but if
everyone uses the new features, we're gonna need
to start load balancing. A dedicated SQL box, and a few
load balancing web servers will probably let us handle
significant growth, but for now, I'd rather concentrate
on just providing all the features I want with the number
of hits we're getting. Once I have to start messing with
load balancing and massive scalability, I'll have even
less time to add actual usability enhancements to the
site.
Email
Ya, it seems to be busted. I'm working on it. Its a major
pain because nobody can get forgotten passwords, and new
users aren't able to login at all. Its my #1 priority right
now. It might just be me now tho, but I think its
working. I get email at 1 of my accounts, but not 2 of
the others. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon.
Source Release
v0.3 is basically done. Unfortunately Slashdot itself has
forked well beyond v0.3. I'm probably gonna release v0.3
anyway. Slashdot is getting so customized for slashdot
that its more work to make a clean version of the code for distribution
than I care to think about. So much of the code is stuff specifically
designed for things we need here, but nobody else would
need. The stuff that would be applicable to another site
is in the v0.3 tarball (many of you have prereleases already).
But I'll probably just bite the bullet and throw it out there
in the next couple weeks. My time to work on it has gone
from minimal to non-existant.
The FTP server is still down. I'm not really planning on putting it back up. The code is downloadable from this directory if you are dying to get it.
New Moderation Stuff
A lot of people had great ideas about how to improve Slashdot
moderation. The new beefy server makes it possible for me
to consider implementing some of them. We'll see how much
juice the current feature roster sucks up- if we've got cycles
to spare, I'll try the new stuff out. It'll be optional
for people who like the old system, but I think the new
system will be a welcome change. More on that later,
but I'm really excited about it. I think that this system
will provide the best compromise that will allow anyone
to say what they want, and anyone to read what they want.
But first I gotta finish that homepage crap.
Better watch it.... we're getting spoiled here!
You still don't get it.
Jennicam?!? Why?
Keep aggregate info on who likes what. That way you can tell if everyone is dumping, say, sengan's articles.
As the subject says, I'm afraid I'm the only deranged one in my family.
Oh, these new features look great (assuming they work/don't bring the server to it's knees) and it might just be the insentive I need to finally click that "Create Account" link.
On another note is this slashdot's first step towards the world of the portal. What's next public stock or the web based email?
This is truely great...Just one thing I'm waiting for... fict@slashdot.org pop3 email addresses.
And to think, I still remember back when rob was considering disabling comments... *sigh* those were the days... wait no. those days sucked. *these* are the days. yum.
As I have said before, I am hoping I'll be able to set my preferences so that i only see the flaming; i.e., people calling each other "you moron", jabbering about clue sticks, etc.
Why the fuck not??????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????
So just set the filtering to show only KDE, GNOME, RMS, and Jon Katz articles. You'll have so many flames you won't know what to do :-)
What does that mean....
Leave Jenni out of it she is cool.....
Just a bitch with no life
What is so special about that?
In other words just like the rest of us around here....these post would not exists if we had life, or something better to do.....:>-
Just another jenni troll.........get over it......ignore it.....and do not respond like I just did.....
Allow the user to be profiled optionally. It is fairly easy-- If a user clicks through to read an article, Slashdot should ask "Are you interested in X category/author writing"? as a poll. From then on, the user has incorporated that kind of article into his or her profile, easier for the front page.
In addition, I'd like to suggest that you add betanews.com to your sidebar content. I believe they actually have a ultramode like script made and stuff.
what ELSE would you do something like /. in?
(ok, besides Java.)
Active server pages, buddy. Rob should turn his operation into a Microsoft farm. Everything can be integrated...so it all crashes at once. ;)
Thanks for all your hard work.
;)
P.S. Long live the Anonymous Coward
P.S.S MEEEPT!!
Absolutely!
And according to this cool colourful full-page ad I see here in my Ziff-Davis mag - Microsoft will provide lots of these fancy "wizards" to help Rob finish up in a few minutes what used to take him hours! And best yet, he doesn't have to actually worry about "understanding" anything!!!
Just a quick note to attempt to express the appreciation I have your your hard /. in it!
work Rob. I don't know that a day would be like without a little
You rule!
-pete mcdonnell
posted from: dhcp-345.test456.domain.net
That should be part of the header when a user posts a message it should display that.
Good idea, but I think the owner makes his living off of advertisements, so that is eliminated if you would have to have emails injected into the new messages.
what else is there to say?
Observe the application called Sh*t which is an (albiet Windows) app for posting/reading PlanetCrap (I'm serious....).
I'm sure someone could come up with something similar for Slashdot.
Either that, or Rob just makes a Gecko-only version and gets high on DHTML :-)
Sengan actually reads the articles he posts and gives an interesting writeup about them. Why would you want to discourage that?
Aye, I was thinking that myself...
being an old school AC.
hopefully itll encourage more article posting,
with the idea that ppl will customize out the
ones that dont want...
something like linuxtoday in the amount of articles
(and even the topic)...awe fuggit, i guess
ill just greybox linuxtoday...
something to consider for 'goodwill' would be
putting an advert link verbatim from the page
you were leeching, such as if i greybox linuxtoday,
that the advert it banners, would be put in as well,
not the entire pic, but just the link itself
as a line of text (anchored by its ALT),
that away, leeched sites that were done
so en mass wouldnt feel ill will towards slashdot.
just a thought.
It can't possibly be that bad!
Has a very powerful XML like Macro language, SQL queries in the server, etc. Written in pike, multi-threaded.. Very fast.
That would be bad. I would no longer be able to post from work. I am probably not the only one.
The account preferences are not working after you login. They just display a blank page. Also I cannot find the cookie login feature.
1 2 1 2
The last post I made (about the cookies not keeping) was posted as an ac, even though i logged in. the preview even showed my sig.
Lynx, slrn and trn are my favorites!
I noticed a big delay loading slashdot pages the boom the rest would come in, after a few minutes I noticed adfu was the culprit...it can't handle feeding the lil ad to the new found power server.
;).
Beef up the hand that feeds you rob, update the adfu machine, its its the same machine, optimize that code
Anyway, how about killfiles? It'd be great to kline MEEPT, SqlKitten, and JonKatz by name, rather than have to lose the AC's of the world along with 'em. No more baby tossed out with the bath water
--
--
Just lurking, thanks!
we all appreciate your hard work man. thanks a million!
---
Perhaps Rob could give one or two of these away occasionally in contests, the way Debian's now doing with their logo contest?
And they don't have to be full POP3 mailboxes, either, they could just be forwards...you can bet that, if Rob were to announce such a contest, you'd see a stampede that would make the ordinary Slashdot Effect look like a slow day :-).
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
> posted from: dhcp-345.test456.domain.net
That's be a disaster... every script kiddie in the world would be using it to bother people, imho.... better idea is just to post *.psnw.com in my case, ie just the domain name, or 206.43.250.* if it's not doing reverse dns at the moment. Be even worse if you've got a static ip.. you'd have no end of troubles... there are small benefits to dynamic ip's, thou not many.
This sig left intentionally blank.
linuxonline.org
Uh, so anyway, Rob, you're hardened to the core...
- Jack Holloway
Posted by Doctor P:
Forwarded would probably be easier for the server(correct me if I'm wrong). It would be nice if it was only for registered users though so that there wouldn't be a people signing up for a million forwarded addresses just for the heck of it.
Posted by "Courageous Coward":
Just imagine if Slashdot becomes the next Yahoo or Netscape...
You don't see a need and I don't see a need, but all those people who flame the posts that they are clearly not interested in (Katz comes to mind) have a need. At least I feel they have a need.
Thanks, Rob, for all your hard work. A day w/o /. would be a dull day indeed.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
I only see Star Wars prequel on the list.. Where's the just "Star Wars"??
The prequel item doesn't filter out the just SW items, btw. I've tried it.
When you were in school you had no free time to work on slashdot and graduation was supposed to fix that. Now you graduated and have as much free time as you had in school. Well we do know this: new stories were getting posted at 8am before graduation and now aren't getting posted until after 12:00. Like I always said, school is a vacation. Enjoy the free time you have in school because after graduation it just goes downhill.
1. Don't make everyone see the customized home page view by default. Store the fact they've got
a customized home page in a cookie. If a bite of their cookie indicates they don't have a personalized home page, give 'em a static page that has everything (this page would be build every few minutes).
DON'T do a if..end if for each article on the page. Get all this info from their cookie, grab all of the article data in one select, and layout the page.
2. Set up some stored procedures to run fairly frequently to reduce the DB hit on selects.
3. You should be able to use joins to stay to one db call per home page load.
Not if you use HTML formatting in the newsgroup. Sure, it sucks for people using primitive newsreaders, but there are hacks to view HTML for most newsreaders.
Actually, there is a Perl module called Apache::ASP that allows you to embed Perl code inside an HTML page. It uses the code delimiters like ASP, and even implements some of the ASP objects like the Session, Response, Request, and Application objects. It is actually pretty nice. It does not use the ADO database access that Microsoft uses, but you can use Perl's DBI instead. I think it is really worth taking a look at. I like being able to create an HTML page and then embed bits of Perl in it to get things done.
Python, of course.
;-) :-)
Seriously, though, I wouldn't use Python -- I'd use Zope (www.zope.org). MAN that's a sweet program. And Open Source, too. It's based on Python (and tons of C), but then isn't everything?
It only takes a few minutes to install and fall in love -- try it!
All partisanship aside, Slashdot's stuck with Perl because that's the code they've got. Makes sense to me!
A pity about the changes, though; I'll spend even less time visiting those other web pages. And the Zope people will have to delay their official Slashdot clone a little.
-Billy
How is it better than using Perl? I couldn't find a direct answer to that question on the site.
It's got easy db access, and it's fairly universal.
/. or for readers that don't have a java capable browser. Add new features to the java client and support them with less server load.
/. at once. Sometimes the ads are as interesting as the content.
You could still keep the web server version for "plain"
It would be straightforward to implement a headline scanner applet, a preferences applet, etc. Eliminating the need to send gobs of html codes for formatting commands that are used over and over and over would help preserve bandwidth.
Ever look at at the html source and see how little of the data that is transferred is actual content?
What I'd really like to see is a "thread update" watcher. With a java applet it would be easy. Just let it ping the server every minute or so to see if there are any new comments to a thread that I am watching. No need to do endless reloads.
Add an ad-dumper and I'd really be satisfied, for a while. Uh, by an ad dumper, I mean a device or page that displays all of the ads that are current on
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
If it becomes a universal portal, it will be useless for me. /. is my portal of preference today because the content and the links are very much in line with what I want to see. I don't need to enter keywords into a search engine and then work my way through the chaff, someone else has already done this for me.
/. looking for interesting links and there they are all lined up nice and neat.
I come to
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Posted by the Proteus
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Hmm, the Preferences section was not there. But hey I found password!!! Whoopee :)
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
It's getting to be a regular old portal around here, don't you think? ;)
--Pete
The new server runs good and if you get those new things to work it will kick ass!
I have to return some videotapes...
If you want to appeal to Solaris users who visit the site, you could make one of the optional sidebars listing news from Solaris Central (www.SolarisCentral.org).
I operate the site and would be glad to provide the text and links in a flat file if that would make things more convienent for you. mail me if you are interested.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
That sort of application which resides on each users desktop and fills in the textual inforation is called a web browser.... it's already there!
/. from anywhere with a browser. common denominator, but it is still very functional.
no flame intent here, i understand what you mean about how an app could have more interesting content, but i think it is cool how i can access
-- Solaris Central - http://w
You have my respect forever man!
/dev
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
No way man. I have ooddles more time now that I have graduated and have a real job. The trick is while at uni there was always some assignment or project to work on. Now when I go home even after a 12hr day the time is all mine. Even when I was putting in nutso hours durring the last end of quater I had more free time. Or atleast it felt more free because of the lack of assignments and stuff.
Which is more-or-less Perl, as I understant it.
"Eye halve a spelling chequer, It came with my pea sea, It plainly marques four my revue, Miss steaks eye kin knot sea"
Ahh, see, but that's the neat thing. I like and read articles by sengan and Jon Katz. You don't. I will continue to read them, and you don't have to. If Rob succeeds, you won't even have to see that they're there. And I won't have to see you bitch about them.
--
I'm sure customizable home pages would be neat, but I don't really see where there's a need. Personally I know I just scan the articles on the fornt page and it's pretty quickly apparent whether any interest me. Does this mean that we'll see more articles that never would have made it before? That would be cool, and would actually make the filtering useful.
Search first, ask questions later.
Is for to be inserted for spaces at the beginning of lines. Like I did with this line by hand. And for the
tag to be allowed. (Just makes text look like code but allows formatting etc.)
That way we could paste in code and it would look like code, complete with the formatting that you need to make it readable.
Whaddayathink? Please?
/me begs
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Seriously, though, php3 is a great language, especially for people who already know perl or c. very easy to learn and powerful enough to do all those little things you used to have to write little perl scripts for. www.php3.org-- check it out!
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
It depends on what you are looking for. Perl has a lot more functionality than PhP. But PhP is GREAT for databases, way easier and trimmer than Perl. Someone actually ported the public slashdot code over to PhP completely, a nice, trim neat little port.
I'm just dying to know if something like them is going to be implemented.
The suspense is killing me!
Not only did it get moderated, I plugged in my threshold to -133 and -666 and I didn't see any of them.
I knew it was there, because I read the comments when this article only had one comment on it. Then I went back to coding for a class of mine. Later, I wanted to read your original post, and sure enough they were gone. Had to search for them. (hint: first)
I am wondering if this is worse then the negative scores on posts critical of linux.com
--
Four years in jail
No Trial, No Bail
*** FREE KEVIN ***
New worlds are not born in the vacuum of abstract
ideas, but in the fight for daily bread --Rudolf Rocke
Actually I think this is all Super great! I'd love to see a doc on how to get the slashdot code running on my own server but that can wait.
:-) if you got 10,000 people to do it that would really rock! Think about it... a nice members area with the super secret stuff woud rock.
One thing though, How about offering an extended slashdot? I'd gladly pay $5.95 a year to access some extra stuff or have a members area.. I figure at $5.95 a year, if you got 1000 people to do it (easy) that would pay for something
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
BTW, the option in preferences to choose the default posting type doesn't work and never has. If I choose HTML (it is listed twice for some reason) it shows up as "Plain Old Text" when I am on this Post Comment screen. I don't think it is actually "Plain Old Text" though because I am able to post HTML tags and they work.
Also the forward and backwards arrows at the top of articles do not filter (I am still getting Star Wars stuff even with it filtered out) -- the filter only works on the index.pl page. I guess I could just change how I read articles.
Everyone is asking for all these special features, etc. Its getting a bit out of hand for a website, imho. Why not do a program that is run locally on somebody's computer to get all these special features so your hardware requirements arent so high. So your computer would just serve the textual info to fill in the blanks on the program. Then the program would have other features like having interfaces to a chatroom and this bulliten board style idea sharing. The possibilities are endless if you would do something.
leave MEEPT alone.. he's fun.
Now I just need to find out why dselect decided to zap /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc (it's making Netscape very interesting).
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
How about coming mirroring your message boards on a NNTP-style news server (and vice versa)? It would be nice to be able to read the comments in a threaded newsreader and not have to mess around with the somewhat clunky message-board interface.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Well, just make it so you'd have to go to the /. discussion area itself to find out what the name of the newsgroup was, then you'd click a link (or copy and paste to your newsreader) to go to it. You'd still see the advert when you stopped in to get the link, but you could read and post to the discussion in newsgroup style. Best of both worlds.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Hmm, I'm interested in the moderation stuff, but Rob's comments on tht are very vague. Anybody know any more details?
I've thought about this too. If there were an application that was just made to display slashdot, it would be much more efficient than Netscape (not quite lynx, but hey). I'm sure, even GPL'd, people could be persuaded to keep the ads (I load the slashdot ads on my homepage just because I like this place so much) The web interface is good, yes, but it's certainly not the most efficient way of doing things.
Hmmm, parts of that would offend people. But what if they got yet another server and yet more bandwidth, and had one f the servers be for-pay and the other be not-for-pay. I would pay to get a faster connection to slashdot. And that way nothing is being withheld from the freeloaders (remember how often we all complain when there's a link to a solely for-pay site).
Geez, Rob... when will it end? When does the free e-mail come online? Can I get regs@slashdot.org?
Seriously, though, it all sounds good and I hope you are jacking your ad rates and courting some other big names (who have the big money). You deserve some compensation for this.
--
"In Cyberspace, no one can hear you be sarcastic"
That is exactly the point. The next trend in portals (and something the internet is very well suited for) is interest-specific portals.
/.).
You can't very well publish a Linux-only daily newspaper, there aren't enough readers to pay subscription fees nor enough advertisers to pay ad fees to make it anything other than a sinkhole for money.
Since the internet puts the onus of delivery on the customer, not the supplier, publishing information can be done dirt cheap in comparison to meatspace information distribution.
This paves the way for any Joe with a hobby to start a portal of sorts (Rob had a leg up, as an interest in coding makes it easier to manage a web site like
People are wowed by the figure of 75,000 that Rob tossed out there the other day, and I will agree, it's quite impressive... but do you realize that Yahoo! gets 160 million page views per day?. While it is somewhat of a chicken and egg issue, with numbers like that you can get advertisers that aren't VA Research and Sendmail, Inc., but more like Platinum Visa. Advertising is always done in terms of eyeballs, and Yahoo! boasts more eyeballs than any old media daily.
--
"In Cyberspace, no one can hear you be sarcastic"
I did a prototype for a web application as Java servlets and liked it a lot (but in the end the "real" website doesn't use Java). I found it easier to work with Jef Poskanzer's Acme.Serve than Sun's own servlet SDK (but YMMV).
AC's are a hot topic. While there certainly are enough potty mouths and undereducated fools out there, there's still got to be some right to express oneself, especially without fear of retribution (AC's). Of course, I almost find myself not agreeing with my own words.
page looks great!
Good job.
kmj
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
Trying a direct post.
Lowmag.net
If you want your sig to show up, and you don't have cookies set-up you must hit the submit button outright. otherwise, hit preview, back, then submit.
Lowmag.net