Slashdot Mirror
Welcome to the New Server
The first thing was to split the SQL off from the httpd. The mysql server now resides on a dedicated dual P2. It runs all the programs that handle keeping the HTML up to date, and NFS exports a nice file system to 3 other boxes (each is a single processor P2) that run httpd (and thats about it). Your hits are routed through an Alteon which divides the hits up amongst the 3 boxes.
The end result is that almost no code changes need to be made. There are tons of things we could do to make it faster still, but we'll look at that when we need it. During load testing this setup was able to handle 3x the load of the existing box.
The major remaining bottleneck is the banner ad frame load time. Browsers like to delay page rendering until they have the HTML for any included layers. For this reason we're going to work out a way to embed the ad HTML directly into the page and sidestep the need for layers. This ought to provide a nice improvement in page render time as well.
Anyway, thanks to all the guys who helped load test the new system before it went live (and if any of you are still running any scripts, you can stop now ;). Thanks to Andover for making this possible, and especially thanks to Peter and CowboyNeal for all your work.
Let us know if you notice anything funky.
The response was getting pretty horrible on the old server. The new one is much nicer.
/. is one of my primary references, so anything you can do to improve performance is greatly appreciated.
--- Bill
I was wondering if VA research is still being used, if the NFS connections are running over seperate Net cards, and if we can see more detailed specs for the httpd boxes. It's always nifty to read technical stuff.
My company is looking at VAR systems for handling some stuff, and we took note of this new system as a test case.
Lowmag.net
Both have "cachefs", and support NFS version 3. Linux' NFS is one of its weakest points - it is dead, bog slow compared to my Solaris servers.
It's fast! Finally!
Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!
Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!
7th Design
My first response above was submitted without preview, and maybe it's just me, but shouldn't the confirmation have shown the message text, even though I did not preview? As it did not, I modified and resubmitted, with preview first....
--- Bill
They're not updating right, it's always "Flat Screens from Apple"
George
I'm surprised that you went for NFS rather than Coda - NFS is a bit suckful, and Linux's implementation doubly so. Coda would have given you a more secure and more efficient protocol for talking to the other servers. Get Andover to buy you a duplicate setup for testing new configurations, and benchmark the two against each other. Or get Mindcraft to do it :-)
--
Xenu loves you!
My Gnome slashapp applet stopped working a few days ago, presumably because you changed that backend. Does anybody have an updated Slashapp?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
But next time you change the IP for your server, it might be a good idea to decrease the TTL for the IP of "slashdot.org" a few days before the change. That way, it won't take up to 24 hours for other sites to pick up the change after their DNS cache entry has expired :-)
I'd just like to say Thanks to Andover for making this new setup possible. And of course, thanks to Rob and Co. for making Slashdot the kickass site it is.
Are all machines running Linux? Which kernel version?
I've transfered hundreds of sites from BSD to Solaris and I can tell you it's an enormous pain in the ass. Even if the entire site is 100% perl, you need to have that perl be 100% OS independent, and even if that is the case there's always something that's overlooked. I'm sure Rob and company could technically move /. to any platform they want, but the bigger and more complicated a site becomes the harder and harder it is to do that. I for one would rather they make the existing archetecture faster rather than experiencing the pain of going to a new platform.
-Rich
This past week the old server has been awful from where I am...this one is a great improvement!
No more adfu serving the banner ads? I was hoping the source code would be released soon...
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
Maybe it's just me...if that's the case, then I've been hacked (I'm sure I upset one or two people the other day). Or, maybe it's just that my DNS server hasn't caught up yet.
/. results in a redirection. Okay. No problem. But, when I try to log in to post, I am given an html page with single line of text that reads "You really want to be on now." And then MS IE5 brings up a dialog box that reads...
/.
Anyway, attempts to access
"The page cannot be refreshed without resending the information. Click Retry to send the information again or click Cancel to return to the page you were trying to view."
Clicking Retry or Cancel just puts me into an endless loop. Only way out is to terminate IE.
Under Netscape, I see the text and am then redirected to
At first I thought it was funny since the article about the Windows backdoor was published this morning. But, IE won't let me get past it. Now, it's not funny (Hence, I'm using my Linux box now).
Either this is a crack or another exposed bug in M$ IE.
Get rid of nfs. There are much better ways of distributing filesystems out there. Like GFS. http://www.globalfilesystem.org
I noticed, that those are the most slowing down requests. I blocked them with squid, and now slashdot is *really* fast!
Early this morning (CET) I found that, although my DNS server & cache gave the correct values, Netscape led me to the redirection page. Does Netscape has a DNS cache of its own? I tried cleaning up the cache (disk & memory) but it didn't help. Now it displays correctly, but nslookup already gave me correct values in the morning...
Somebody who knows more?
Eon.
Except for me, it's the NSA backdoor article.
Right now, the back link from this story goes to the NSA Backdoor in Windows Crypto story, when the Alan Cox story is actually the previous one, and there's no forward link at all, although on the main page I see the Railroad Tycoon story above this one.
Other stories do similar things. Earlier today, I was seeing Flat Screens from Apple as the previous poster noted.
Also, the timestamps are funky. This story says it was posted at 12:38 PM EDT today, which meshes with my view of reality, but the first comments are marked 9:29 AM EDT today! Just imagine how bad the slashdot effect would be if slashdotters traveled back in time, too!
...They're Grrrrrrrrrrreat!
Brought to you by Tony the Tiger.
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Also, what happens to sebastian now? Do the new servers have names yet?
In the spirit of all those Slashdot conversations on the topic of "why aren't there more women crackers", I want Mr.Malda to reread the first sentence of this post.
Last I heard, "guys" was more exclusive than inclusive. So why not use the underappreciated "y'all"?! It works better than you might think.
Is it possible that the people updating every 5 seconds are actually in a larger company using NAT so all 10000 /. readers in the company are sharing an IP?
I'm sure Rob's using either 2.2.x kernels, or if he is more daring maybe some of the more stable 2.3.x kernel series. Either way from everything I've read knfsd is way better than the old userland nfs server. I wouldn't be surprised if they were using that, and (if they were feeling daring) the khttpd server for the non-interactive elements of the page. Coda sounds nice on paper and all, but I think they went with NFS because they already knew how it worked and were familiar with everything about it, where as CODA appears to be fairly new in comparison, and possibly less well tested than NFS. I'm not opening myself up for a gigantic flamewar from everyone who insists FreeBSD/Coda is better, but if I were in Rob's shoes (and thank God I'm not)I would have gone with NFS as well, simply because it is tried and true, and CODA (even though on paper it is superior in every aspect) is not.
Nope. Problem still exists. But, at least if I terminate IE, I am logged in the next time around.
I usually don't like to shamelessly plug my employer, but our tech dept is quite overworked and unsung.
I will, however, point out that I now get ZERO LAG!! Yay!
Please use the more preferred YOU ALL or Y'ALL.
Hmm... now just update the server to display the right images on the main page (apple, us flag, crypto, hardware) and you'll be all set.
(nice job overall, tho). *clap clap clap*
I can think of no logical reason to do such a horrible thing. A company of 10,000 could surely afford for more ips.
these days. I call bevys of females "guys" all the time, and I know I'm not the only one who does this.
I am curtious as to which Alteon products you decided yo use. Can you be specific? For people interested in load balancing this could be enlightning.
- a confused novice
Please, oh, please bring back ultramode.txt. I have a script that parses it and puts the first few sentences of each article into a menu. It's nice to be able to browse the /. news before visiting ./ for real. slashdot.xml doesn't have any article text at all. It just has author, title, URL, and some other things that I don't care about.
My Company uses a firewall from VHAsecrue.net .xml file on there windows boxes. I am sorry if this is a huge problem. I wouldn't like to have our IP be placed on lock out. Thanks.
We have many people using the
Browsers like to delay page rendering until they have the HTML for any included layers.
Many browsers also like to know the size of the images before they attempt to render the page. This is good incentive to use those WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes on your IMG tags. I've seen lots of web pages which have been effectively "held hostage" by problematic ad servers. Good thing this never happends on Slashdot. Then again...
Of course, the ad banners loads instantly (ad banners are generally the fastest things on the net... just another thing that points to modern ideals of the "news hole"), the icons and Slashdot logo load fast, and then it takes a week for the rest of the page to come in. The news, the sidebars, etc. take forever to load. This is only since the new implementation.
This wouldn't exactly solve the problem, since the ip changed.
But anyway, in case you didn't know, you can use http://255 = http://0.0.0.255, http://256 = http://0.0.1.0, etc. You get the idea. Use it, it's cool!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I was hoping the adfu code would be released too. Maybe with the Andover deal the guys don't need the money they were getting from adfu (however much it was, probably not much) so they're not going to have it around anymore.
What you don't realize is that segfault.org is approximately aleph-one times funnier than both the above sites, AND slashdotters already love it! So in other words, thanks but no thanks.
Man! Now i'm not gonna be able to read /. at my school! We have a t-3 or something routed from the administration building that goes to 8 schools and about 10k people maybe 500 computers. O well BESS filtering software probably blocks /. for no good reason anyway
Recently I had to move a server to a new ip address too. Only when I did it nobody noticed. You can make your system listen to the new ip at the same time it listens to the old one. I can't login and see my slashboxes because our DNS is not up to date yet. If your server were still listening to the old ip for say another week I wouldn't have noticed (except for the speed increase) that you changed servers. Think of the time wasted by thousands of people following the redirect. Arg.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.
OK, here's my take on it.
"Guys" as a form of address is widely accepted as a gender-nonspecific term.
Other uses of the word are *usually* intended to imply the male gender only.
Context is the key, and I think we are all intelligent enough here to glean the appropriate context from Rob's comment. He's run polls on the gender breakup of his audience, so he's obviously aware that he does not have a 100% male audience.
So stop being so damn precious!
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
IMG with WIDTH and HEIGHT should do the job. What's the secret?
grow some balls, go out and ask them in person.
Hmm, let's see here....
Posted today..."Ohio Ready for Y2K"...[insert ancient "Y to K" joke here].
I pity you if you seriously believe this to be funnier than The Onion. Try this headline on for size:
Joke Repetition Kills 18 in Workplace Shooting
Reuters -- After hearing the same "Y to K" joke for what he reportedly shouted as being "the 500 millionth time" an area system administrator took the lives of 17 cow-orkers and then shot himself fataly in what police are calling the worst case of joke repetition on record.
I know for a fact that this previous paragraph is funnier than anything on polyester.net just as I know that The Onion staff wouldn't use it to wipe their asses.
What's an Alteon?
How does it work?
-jfedor
Couldn't the perl scripts just connect directly to the database server? If they can, that should be much faster than serving the data out of the database machine via NFS, or any other filesystem.
Yanno, when I was in school (many years ago), we were taught that whereas she had a specific and constant meaning, he was context dependent in its meaning, as it referred to either gender. Likewise with mankind, chairman, and so many others. I recall thinking (even in grade school) that it was unfair for women and girls to have their own pronouns, while we had to share.
PC language is a semantic nightmare which makes a disgusting (or impersonal) mess of an otherwise very capable language: English.
I'm quite willing to refrain from using any of the 7 words, but I'm not about to start typing he or she or s/he.
Heinlein said it best: Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic
will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, 'equality' is a disaster.
--- Bill
Something is wrong here, according to my browsers, the latest story is the "Business Software for Linux" one that was posted at 12:44 PM EDT. It's now 3:24 AM EDT and NOT ONE story has been posted between those times? Is it just my computer, or is there a serious lack of stories?
Check your rsize and wsize options that you use on Linux to mount the NFS stuff. I've read that increasing these to 4096 can help with Solaris interoperability.
Check the NFS-HOWTO for Linux for details.
James
Solaris , more accurately Sun , did invent NFS didn't they ? but look at the IP stack performance ( you still need that , you know ) and Linux outperforms Solaris by a fair shot . Just wait abit , NFS may be getting a big time tune up pretty soon here . BSD may have the best performance in the room but it suffers from a deadly philosophical difference . I read the rebuttal to Linux user's gripes about BSD and the author simply missed the point altogether . GPL vs BSD style license is a philosophical difference that should not be looked lightly upon . It is too bad that BSD did not jump on the Gnu bandwagon . Your Squire Squireson
This new arrangement is so fast, my modem is red hot!!
Seriously, a great improvement. Well done.
---- Robert Anton Wilson: "Belief is the death of intelligence."
Settle down, Beavis.
Most advertisers these days want you to run more than a simple image. These days they'll send you a whole chunk of HTML they want you to insert in place of the ad. If you're going to a have a central ad server, the easiest way to pull a block of HTML from another machine and insert it into an area of this page is to pull it through an IFRAME/ILAYER tag. The downside to that is Netscape and IE will not display the page until the IFRAME/ILAYER finishes loading, so Rob says above he's redesiging things so ILAYER won't be used so the pages will render faster.
Slashdot was moved from some ISP on the west coast to Digtal Nation in Virginia. I don't how it would be possible to configure a machine on a completely different network to listen to an IP on someone else's network -- if that were possible then I could configure my server to capture all requests for www.yahoo.com and somehow I don't see how that's possible.
How come these files from /code.shtml are so much older now? Not updated when new stories are posted? Should people just parse the main slashdot page for all the latest headlines or ?
I was in the Bahamas when this happened. I feel so out of the loop. Meanwhile, did anyone else see the miller ligt commercials with Marc Andreesen and Norm MacDonald?
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
There have been lots of questions posted over the past two weeks since we first hinted that a move was imminent but we have all been just too busy to answer them individually. We do intend to write up a description of the current system and document our trials and tribulations along the way. If there is any interest, perhaps we can do an official Ask Slashdot as well.
But in the meantime, here are the answers to some of the questions you have already asked...
Paul Crowley writes:
I'm surprised that you went for NFS rather than Coda - NFS is a bit suckful, and Linux's implementation doubly so. Coda would have given you a more secure and more efficient protocol for talking to the other servers. Get Andover to buy you a duplicate setup for testing new configurations, and benchmark the two against each other.
Macphisto writes:
Coda smacks my bitch up tho. A non-sucking nfs. With fault handling, redundancy, good performance, a light kernel footprint... drool. It would be cool for /. to go for it but it ain't gonna happen, too beta still... and seeing as this place is just another corporate shop now, they can't take risks.
Tadpol writes:
Get rid of nfs. There are much better ways of distributing filesystems out there. Like GFS
There are many other network filesystems and NFS does have some serious drawbacks, but the requirements and demands of Slashdot are quite minimal. My philosophy is always to try what is quick and easy first and then optimise out the bottlenecks. I believe that we served something like six million pages over our three days of testing and NFS was never a bottleneck. NFS provides far more functionality than we really need and doubling or even trippling speed would show little effect on the overall system.
However, after listening to Peter Braam's talk on Coda and InterMezzo at Linux Expo back in May, I am very excited about the InterMezzo package for use in distributed web hosting. If you ever get a chance to hear Peter speak, do not pass it up -- his talk was one of the most informative conference presentations that I have ever heard. Unfortunately, there is very little information about InterMezzo available on the web and the conference proceedings focused more on Coda than InterMezzo.
Decibel writes:
Couldn't the perl scripts just connect directly to the database server? If they can, that should be much faster than serving the data out of the database machine via NFS, or any other filesystem.
The current system consists of six machines. One dedicated for Ad-Fu, one dedicated for images (no change so far from the old setup) one machine serving MySQL and NFS and three machines serving HTTP requests. We arbitrarily chose three machines for HTTP, but we can bring additional machines on-line in about an hour. The machines that serve HTTP requests do not run MySQL, they make a database connection over the network to the MySQL server.
NFS is only used to serve static pages that are generated directly on the MySQL server to the HTTP machines. Caching them locally would reduce internal network traffic, but that is not really an issue since we have gobs of internal bandwidth to spare. Btw, InterMezzo is my solution for people who cannot afford a private 100 Mbps switch or who would max one out.
Those paying close attention will notice that we are using a mod_perl enabled server to deliver static pages. We can theoritically obtain a performance gain by dedicating certain httpd processes with and without mod_perl and we are considering this as a future project.
Anonymous Coward writes:
Great job! Congrats!
But next time you change the IP for your server, it might be a good idea to decrease the TTL for the IP of "slashdot.org" a few days before the change. That way, it won't take up to 24 hours for other sites to pick up the change after their DNS cache entry has expired
We did initiate this about 4-5 days before the cutover, but there were some problems with Rob Malda's NIC handle. As things turned out, we got the TTL update pushed out about 30 hours before the cutover which should have been sufficient since the previous TTL was 24 hours.
Btw, several people have mentioned this and I am looking into the problem. All I can say at this point is that all of the servers that I have access to updated properly. Is it possible that some caching DNS servers ignore TTL values less than 24 hours to avoid DoS attacks?
ChiChiCuervo writes:
It would have been nice if Rob also mentioned the gurus from DigitalNation who put the servers together and provide the bandwidth to Andover (and now also /.).
I usually don't like to shamelessly plug my employer, but our tech dept is quite overworked and unsung.
Special thanks do go out to all the guys at DN (Chris, Brad, Brian and Gordon) whom I have worked personally, as well as those I have not. Rob did not mention you because I have been the sole networking contact.
Although everyone I worked with directly was intelligent, helpful and courteous, there were some fundamental problems which occured that prevent me from giving a more praise to the company as a whole. (Anyone in a position of power at Digital Nation should feel free to contact me directly regarding these issues, btw.)
I will, however, point out that I now get ZERO LAG!! Yay!
Let's hope that you continue to maintain a good set of peering arrangements so that the rest of us get as close to the same performance as possible. ;-)
Anonymous Coward writes:
Also, what happens to sebastian now? Do the new servers have names yet?
The status of the old hardware is somewhat unknown, at least to me anyway. As best as I can guess, the three machines that were running Slashdot became the property of Andover as part of the purchase. I think they have been unofficially gifted back to Blockstackers to run the Everything project. Despite some of the comments that I have read otherwise, Andover really is a cool company and doesn't quibble over little things like this. (Although, the next batch of SGI flatscreens get set up in our offices. ;-)
The new servers have dull, boring, and unexciting names -- in the DNS anyways. When you are responsible for 30+ machines, you go for descriptive over cute. Besides, they can always be CNAMEd to something more interesting.
marnold writes:
Browsers like to delay page rendering until they have the HTML for any included layers.
Many browsers also like to know the size of the images before they attempt to render the page. This is good incentive to use those WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes on your IMG tags. I've seen lots of web pages which have been effectively "held hostage" by problematic ad servers. Good thing this never happends on Slashdot. Then again...
To the best of my knowledge, all of the images on Slashdot are properly tagged with width and height tags. If you ever find a page in error, just contact Pater.
The real problem is with the IFRAME ads. We are going to try to address this problem as best we can. Another problem related to IFRAME ads in general is that some advertisers require that the HTML live on their servers. This really isn't too bad per se, but we have seen them serve up some FUBARed HTML and their servers bog down under load.
angelo writes:
I was wondering if VA research is still being used, if the NFS connections are running over seperate Net cards, and if we can see more detailed specs for the httpd boxes. It's always nifty to read technical stuff.
My company is looking at VAR systems for handling some stuff, and we took note of this new system as a test case.
Digital Nation does not allow the use of third-party equipment in their facility. They build everything in-house from a common set of components so that their tech staff can diagnose and repair all problems directly. A very good idea, IMHO, as this makes hardware failures such as the ones that occured during Linux Expo much easier to deal with. Personally, I do everything possible to keep my telephone from ringing at 3:00 AM.
I've seen some of the new VA hardware and it does look pretty sweet. I particularly like the new Intel motherboards they use with the remote administration serial port. In the future, I'd like all of my servers to have this feature. (Hint hint!)
In any case, a much more detailed overview of the setup and transition to the new facility will be forthcoming.
Indomitus writes:
I'd just like to say Thanks to Andover for making this new setup possible. And of course, thanks to Rob and Co. for making Slashdot the kickass site it is.
You're welcome!
Oscarfish writes:
This past week the old server has been awful from where I am...this one is a great improvement!
No more adfu serving the banner ads? I was hoping the source code would be released soon...
Indomitus writes:
I was hoping the adfu code would be released too. Maybe with the Andover deal the guys don't need the money they were getting from adfu (however much it was, probably not much) so they're not going to have it around anymore.
Ad-Fu is still currently serving banner ads and the release of Ad-Fu source is really up to Rob. Andover is in the process of merging their own advertising system with Ad-Fu and integrating a delivery mechanism using a compiled-in Apache module. Whether this code will be released as open source is unknown at this time.
Ronin Developer writes:
Maybe it's just me...if that's the case, then I've been hacked (I'm sure I upset one or two people the other day). Or, maybe it's just that my DNS server hasn't caught up yet.
There were some DNS issues, already addressed above.
Anyway, attempts to access /. results in a redirection. Okay. No problem. But, when I try to log in to post, I am given an html page with single line of text that reads "You really want to be on now." And then MS IE5 brings up a dialog box that reads...
"The page cannot be refreshed without resending the information. Click Retry to send the information again or click Cancel to return to the page you were trying to view."
Clicking Retry or Cancel just puts me into an endless loop. Only way out is to terminate IE.
Under Netscape, I see the text and am then redirected to /.
I'm guessing that MS-IE has some problems with either the redirection or the change of IP or a combination of the two. We've noticed several MS-IE problems are are working to correct them. All of us develop and test using Netscape, so we rely somewhat on the "Open Source Browser Testing" model. If you ever notice a problem, please send a detailed description off to Pater.
Eon78 writes:
Early this morning (CET) I found that, although my DNS server & cache gave the correct values, Netscape led me to the redirection page. Does Netscape has a DNS cache of its own? I tried cleaning up the cache (disk & memory) but it didn't help. Now it displays correctly, but nslookup already gave me correct values in the morning...
Netscape does, in fact, cache DNS lookups. I do not know how they flush the cache internally, but the only way that I know of to flush it immediately is to exit and restart. I assume MS-IE functions similarly.
Anonymous Coward writes:
Is it possible that the people updating every 5 seconds are actually in a larger company using NAT so all 10000 /. readers in the company are sharing an IP?
joe52 writes:
How about proxy servers. I recently worked for a company of over 50,000, but all of the http traffic was flowing through proxy servers. The individual boxes must have hundreds, if not thousands, of users accessing the web through them.
That said, I still think that it's probably a script.
When requests come in at a very regular basis, we know that it is a script. ;-)
We know because we have been personally monitoring the logs for any sign of problems. If you were banned, it is because a human (probably Rob) decided to ban you. We hope that a system to automatically ban abusive users will be unnecessary, but it is under consideration.
Reverse Corruption writes:
My Company uses a firewall from VHAsecrue.net We have many people using the .xml file on there windows boxes. I am sorry if this is a huge problem. I wouldn't like to have our IP be placed on lock out. Thanks.
If you ever get banned by accident, please contact Pater to resolve the problem. As mentioned previously, the process is all done manually so for now at least it shouldn't happen without a good reason.
mkasei writes:
I am curtious as to which Alteon products you decided yo use. Can you be specific? For people interested in load balancing this could be enlightning.
jfedor writes:
What's an Alteon? How does it work?
Alteon is the name of a company that makes dedicated, high-speed, load-balancing routers. Given their design, they almost function more like a switch than a router. Slashdot runs off of one port on a shared ACEDirector managed by our ISP, Digital Nation.
The slashdot.org name resolves to an IP address on the Alteon ACEDirector switch. This switch then does some masquerading and hands the request off to an individual web server using a fairly complicated algorithm to attempt to deliver the request to the least-loaded machine.
This is a fairly simplistic model both physically and conceptually, especially since there actually two switches running in a master-slave arrangement to keep things running in case one unit fails. (Can you say single point of failure? I knew you could...)
m3000 writes:
Something is wrong here, according to my browsers, the latest story is the "Business Software for Linux" one that was posted at 12:44 PM EDT. It's now 3:24 AM EDT and NOT ONE story has been posted between those times? Is it just my computer, or is there a serious lack of stories?
This could be due to one of two reasons, or perhaps both. Stories were held up during the move in an attempt to reduce traffic at the cutover point, but there was also a bug in the code that was not dating articles properly. The gap may be explained by software fix -- if you had been hitting the site hourly (why aren't you?) you may have seen a regular flow of articles.
While we're on the subject of banner ads, I think that Slashdot could break new ground by having _text_ advertisements, rather than animated GIFs. I think they would be well suited to this site, as it is heavily based on reading, rather than pictures, animations, or any of that 'rich multimedia experience' crap.
What I'm thinking of is a paragraph immediately after the story on each comments page, that says, 'ADVERTISEMENT: Fongrel Inc. have just launched a new range of dual-Athlon Fongrix Linux-based workstations.', with links as appropriate. For things like job adverts, this could work really well. And Lynx users would be able to see them.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
You're scary and corporate...
That's all really