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New Slash Version v1.0.3 109

Posted by CmdrTaco from the squashing-da-bugs dept.
pudge writes "Yo. We released slash-1.0.3. Bug reports and CVS and file downloads are on SourceForge. Slashcode is now hosted at Exodus with Slashdot and Freshmeat. " The scary part is that now Slashdot and Slashcode are totally synched up... which means programmers can e-mail diffs instead of bug reports and feature suggestions (hint hint hint!)
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New Slash Version v1.0.3 More

New Slash Version v1.0.3

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  • What did you do with CmdrTaco?! (Score:4)

    by Longing ( 23218 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @04:02AM (#1046806) Homepage
    Slashcode and Slashdot are synched up? Who are you, and what did you do with CmdrTaco?! We demand his release!!
  • Now if I just had a good use for it. Other than read News for Nerds that is...
  • A friend and I just setup Slash on a server for his work. The setup was pretty easy. Kudos to the Slash team for getting this out and making it easy to install.
    --
    then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
  • In the last update, you mentioned that you abandoned Adfu in favor of a C program that you developed for ad-rotation, which would run under Apache. When will the code for that be available?

  • feature suggestions (Score:5)

    by ChristTrekker ( 91442 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @04:15AM (#1046810)
    • Valid HTML 4.
    • A set of style rules that doesn't blind a guy when reading BSD or Apache sections.
  • My /.-Fu is more powerful than your /.-Fu!

    Why is it such a big deal again? What's so special about some forum code? Of-course it is nice and all but is it really scallable to millions and maybe even billions of users? Imagine the time when EVERYONE on this planet becomes a /. reader/poster/troll, how will this code stand up to such a demanding job I wander? It is time to rewrite everything in Assembler and JSP!
  • I once emailed Rob with a nasty bug which annoys me almost every day:

    When I have set my default threshold to tree and commentsort to nested, and when I click on the "Parent" link of a comment, where the parent is beyond my threshold, I get nothing or at least nothing useful. (No cid and pid=0).

    It looks like now I have no excuse any more not to fix this bug myself. :-/

    - Stephan.
    --
    Carpe diem!
  • Yeah, they're so lousy, they can't even come up with a web site that anyone actually uses. :p
    And what's wrong with using what you know? If the code _works_ and it works just fine, why write it in a "more complicated" language? Did I mention that the code works?
  • I hate to make a "me too" kind of post, but what is it with the BSD and Apache sections? The BSD colors aren't *terribly* bad, but the apache?! BLECH. It gives me a headache.

  • Re:The *real* wonderful part... (Score:3)

    by ai731 ( 36146 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @04:27AM (#1046815)
    The real scary part about this, is that now the trolls will have the full source code to analyse for loopholes and bugs that will allow them further abuse of the system.

    the real wonderful part is that there will now be lots more 'pairs of eyes' checking the slashcode for loopholes and bugs that will allow quicker bugfixes and a more robust system...

    ... i've heard this argument somewhere before - haven't you?

    ai731

    --

  • The real scary part about this, is that now the trolls will have the full source code to analyse for loopholes and bugs that will allow them further abuse of the system.
    The real good part about this is that now the skilled programmers have the full source code to quickly fix the loopholes and bugs that allow the trolls to abuse the system.
    - Stephan.
    --
    Carpe diem!

  • Some of us out here are even worse programmers, and wouldn't have the skill to write something on this scale if they wanted to. I should know, I'm one of them.

    I setup slash a few months ago, and had a major learning experience with apache, perl, CPAN and funky virtual server setups. Now, I've got it running great and I'm extending the functionality by running Zope side-by-side.

    I've been talking about my website idea for a LONG time with my family. Thanks to these lousy programmers, an even worse programmer has been able to impress a lot of people.

    Now, if I can just get hits.

    Dave

  • Does it serve properly yet? (Score:3)

    by Old Wolf ( 56093 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @04:32AM (#1046818)
    For the last few weeks, Slashdot has add annoying "pauses" where the browser will connect to the server, but no data will ever come. These pauses last for anything from one minute to 30. Then I have to squish all my posting in before the next piece of downtime.

    Has anyone else noticed this?

  • Re:What did you do with CmdrTaco?! (Score:5)

    by El Volio ( 40489 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @04:38AM (#1046819) Homepage
    "Slashcode and Slashdot are synched up? Who are you, and what did you do with CmdrTaco?! We demand his release!"

    Every time you ask about his release, they'll keep him in captivity for another 24 hours...

  • Halelujah brother.

    I remember giggling reading the Zeldman interview [slashdot.org] when he made the joke about the teal/black design of /.

    Either he was pulling punches or he doesn't read the Apache and BSD topics.

  • I was noticing that too...But it turns out that in the past few weeks they've upgraded their server setup, switched hosting providers, and were subjected to a DDOS attack... Those aside, it's been running smoother than it has in quite some time in my eyes... And it's not like they're going to upgrade their mahcines again in the near future or switch to yet another host. And you can't blame anyone for the lack of response from their site during a DDOS attack.
  • How about XHTML 1.0 or XML? XML would allow Slashdot to truly personalize itself. It would probably make for cleaner and easier slashcode, too. The ability to use user-defined tags could extend the capabilities of slashcode...

  • Harumph - does this include the patch for the meta-moderation bug I flamed you (pudge) about? It was somewhere on the beta site, and the comments are probly gone now. At least I can meta-moderate now.

    ---------------------------------
  • I have been begging for better colors for months.

    I do like the basic gray and green, but the other sections suck nuts.

    Since /. is so great, why not let users configure their own color, or would that be too much load on the server...

    -ed

  • It depends what you're trying to do. Write "Hellow World" in java and perl. See which is most complicated.
  • I use Adcycle (http://www.adcycle.com) with my existing Slash installation (1.0.2) at http://www.e-league.com with no problems.. I'd try that if you need an ad rotator.
  • Rewrite it in VBScript so that it runs locally on compliant browsers.

    Sorry..... I'll shoot myself now.
  • Slashdot is in definate requisite of having a modified light mode in comments... The HTML is really hard to read.

  • How about XHTML 1.0 or XML?

    Isn't it a little soon to be starting that? Support for these languages is only beginning to emerge in major web browsers; even when (say) Mozilla's ready, to put everything into XHTML or XML would be to tie /.'s readership to one of two browsers, which contravenes one of the goals of /. -- to reach as many nerds as possible.

    Now, if you're talking about having this as an option for those bleeding-edgers, you may have something there.

    Currently, is there a useable browser that understands XML other than IE 5, or other Win32-only (near enough) apps? Lack of test systems may figure into the equation here.

  • Re:feature suggestions (Score:4)

    by dingbat_hp ( 98241 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @05:12AM (#1046830) Homepage

    I'd support XHTML (but go easy on the CSS), but not XML. XML doesn't allow much extra that can't be achieved anyway by screen scraping, and that's pretty easy in XHTML (Palm portallers, read the last para before screaming at me).

    The only real benefit from going with XML would be for people who wanted to leech Slashdot content and rebadge it on other sites in a fairly greedy manner. This isn't something that many will want, nor should it be encouraged. If there's a demand for headline and link-swapping between sites, then use RSS - it's what it's there for.

    The downside of XML, is that it's compatible with nothing out there browser-wise and so you'd inevitably fall back to a two-formats legacy position, probably involving HTML 3.2 for the lesser stream.

    XHTML Transitional doesn't break any existing browsers, and it still lets you use enough format control to make it viewable on old Netscapes. A good push for WAI standards on Slash content would fit in with an XHTML move and would probably benefit people doing portals for wireless and small-screen devices. I certainly don't think that wireless portalling needs XML (with a SlashSchema) instead of XHTML.

  • Suggestions for discussion (Score:5)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @05:16AM (#1046831) Homepage
    Here's a few things to bandy about (no need for actual diffs).

    Theming
    Everyone bitches about the colors, especially in the BSD and Apache sections (and, I must say, YRO isn't much better). Why not setup a colors preferences panel? That shouldn't be too hard to implement.

    Removal of Comments
    Given the recent controversy over Microsoft and what not, give users the ability to remove their own comments, maybe with a karma penalty or something. We can moderate our system, but we can't responsibly manage it.

    That's just a couple of ideas, and there's tons more, I'm sure. On to Slash 2.0!
  • More room for personal stuff in the Personal Slashbox is what's between me and setting /. as "Home". Or read a document from my site and put it in a box.

    Ah, and stop killing Opera.

  • I think that Cascading Style Sheets _should_ mean that you can set up your own colour schemes, which override those used by Slashdot. If Slashdot is using CSS properly, that is.

    I don't know if any browser lets you specify different stylesheets for different sites though.
  • XHTML would be nice. (It would be readable with older browsers also.)

    XML itself does not solve anything. I might write XML document like:
    ...
    <news>
    <newsheader article="https://www.domain.com/articles?id=1255" link="http://www.slashdot.org/">Slashdot supports XML!</newsheader>
    </news>
    ...
    but what browser could render that? There are no rules how to present information in XML. You need CSS or XLS also and AFAIK there are no browsers that support all of CSS or XLS correctly.
    _________________________

  • then don't use it.
  • The downside of XML, is that it's compatible with nothing out there browser-wise and so you'd inevitably fall back to a two-formats legacy position, probably involving HTML 3.2 for the lesser stream.

    Two points about this.

    First, I think there is better XML display support [xml.com] than you might think. Given that you're realistically looking something like a year ahead on this, I don't see why you shouldn't go for the gusto.

    You also suggest that going with just XHTML won't require any fall-back position. I'm really not sure that's true. And even if it were true, you could turn an internal XML representation into the traditional, cruftified Slashdot HTML that we and our browsers know and love.

    But, having said that, I agree that XHTML (with full CSS) is waaaay better than nothing. Given that Slashdot is News for Nerds, I see no reason why it shouldn't be at least closer to the leading edge with respect to style sheets and standards compliance.

  • and now we will continue to code around the trolls.
  • he gets tons of email - the best way for the bug to be fixed is to log it into sourceforge.
  • "Overrated" moderation only on moderated posts.

    //rdj
  • Perhaps now people will stop flaming about OpenSource/ Slashdot / code release. It really is getting tired. I thought people would stop complaining at the last release. Apparently I was wrong. Is everybody happy now? Good then play nicely. Seriously though it does stop people complaining that Rob etc. don't really support OpenSource. Which I think is obviously rubbish. Anyway I think I hear my boss coming.

  • Actually, what I see is a particularly noticeable delay needed to download the little green GIFs with a rounded edge (slc.gif). The page is already displayed though so I can read /. but it takes time to complete. I don't think it behaved the same a few weeks ago.

    Am I the only one to see that behaviour ?

    --
  • If you can come up with better SQL, stop your whining and send a better query to CmdrTaco. Not only wil you get a pat on the head (and maybe a cookie if you're particularly inventive), but if your new uber SQL query speeds up Slashdot, then everybody will love you for it.

    I am sure the /. crew doesn't really know SQL. It sounds like you *might*. If you *do* prove it and make SlashCode better for all eternity (replace the abysmal queries with mediocre queries - even small improvements are good). Otherwise, quit your whining.
  • Removal of Comments
    Given the recent controversy over Microsoft and what not, give users the ability to remove their own comments, maybe with a karma penalty or something. We can moderate our system, but we can't responsibly manage it.
    No, I think that would be a very Bad Thing. Everybody should stand behind what he said or wrote, even hours or days later.

    And what about replies to removed comments? Would they be removed then, too? If they wouldn't, you would end up with comments without correlation.

    NB, I think the above comment is totally overrated. :-(

    - Stephan.
    --
    Carpe diem!
  • I'm working on it. Right now the Andover.Net ad rotation system works on an Apache module written in C. The ad data is stored in text files locally on each web server (or NFS server for clustered web sites like Slashdot) and hourly cron jobs on each server count number of impressions per ad then create new ad rotation lists. I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed that the system is still based on flat text files and string parsing -- I like to keep things simple for the sake of reliability. We're currently working on moving all of the ad serving logic into a CORBA server that talks to a database -- so much for simplicity.

    Anyway, if you're still interested, even after I've shamefully confessed that it's all based on flat text files, please email me and I'll let you know when I've got a SourceForge project ready for it.

  • ...anyone of you had to write a thing like Slash from scratch, knowing it would get as many visitors and posters as Slashdot has, do you think it would be a good idea to use PHP and MySQL ?

    -Why, or why not ?
    -Would PHP(4) keep up with the amount of traffic ?
    -Would PHP make this better maintable and expandable by other people ?
    -And would PHP increase the development speed ?

    I'd personaly give all of the above questions a positive answer...
  • The downside of XML, is that it's compatible with nothing out there browser-wise

    Ah, but who says you have to present the clients with XML? You can use XSL/whatever-transformations-you-desire to spit it out as HTML (or XHTML) from the server side today, and later you can just start handing the markup sheet to browsers that understand it.

    Semantic markup rules.

  • Make it so that more than one adjective can be applied to posts:
    (Score: 5; Funny, Insightful)
    Good point! I always find it quite confusing to see a comment rated (Score:4, Troll), just because it got one "troll" and four or five "interesting" moderations.
    - Stephan.
    --
    Carpe diem!
  • Since /. is so great, why not let users configure their own color, or would that be too much load on the server...

    No, it wouldn't. Actually, it would put *less* load on the server, as well as consume less badwidth.

    The script should form the page with no formatting, just *valid* content. A .css would be generated on the fly, but this would be just a MySQL lookup, real fast.

    Alternatively, the style sheet could be embedded in the document or stored as "username".css, being updated each time the user decides to change preferences.

    Another thing that is really in need of change is the time it takes to download pages. Why throw everything together in a single table? Couldn't we have a table for the story, sections, links and preferences, and then have the posts outside tables, or arranged in strips of, say, 1 thread per table?

    Before anyone asks:

    • I don't do this myself because I don't do perl.
    • I don't use light mode because I like the look of the formatted page.

  • XHTML is basically supported now by any browser supporting the latest HTML specs. I mean, not perfectly perhaps, but then again, what browser supports HTML perfectly? :-)
  • "Overrated" moderation only on moderated posts.

    You, for example, seem to have high enough karma for your posts to default at 2. However, once in a while you may say something that really doesn't deserve a 2 - so then the "overrated" moderation would be appropriate, even though no one has moderated the comment in question yet.
  • The bug where you can't meta-moderate because it thinks you've recently meta-moderated even though you've never meta-moderated? Yeah, should be fixed now. Check the CHANGES file, and look in the code if you like. But since you can meta-moderate, I guess that answers your question anyway. :-)
  • "Overrated" moderation only on moderated posts.

    Some people get a +1 because of high karma, and then end up posting a bunch of extremely mediocre messages at a starting score of 2. For people that browse with a threshold (or highlight threshold) of 2, as I used to do, this means a lot of tripe shows up. This can be annoying to those who keep such a threshold in order to get a collection of high quality comments to read.

    People who get the +1 can post a comment without the +1 by checking a box. This is a good thing to do if the message is not particularly informative, insightful, interesting, funny, etc. People who post mediocre comments at a score of 2 deserve to get an "overrated" moderation.

    That's my opinion of course.

  • Yes, the meta-mod bug looks like it's fixed.

    If you have never meta-moderated, go to http://slashdot.org/metamod.pl [slashdot.org] and get in on the fun.

    Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

  • What do you mean "killing Opera"? If bad HTML is making it die, that's Opera's fault for not being robust enough.

  • Re:So fix it! (Score:4)

    by pudge ( 3605 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMpudge.net> on Friday May 26, 2000 @06:21AM (#1046856) Homepage Journal
    Do NOT send it to CmdrTaco. Or me, or CowboyNeal, or CaptTofu. Use SourceForge [sourceforge.net] for bugs and patches and feature requests.

    As to us "not knowing SQL" (I am not sure if that is tongue-in-cheek or not), well, all I can say is that there is a lot of really old code in there. Sure, you are going to see a lot of cruft. We're working hard on rewriting major portions of the thing. You may see some code in there that does nothing at all, or does nothing useful, or does something bad. All I can say to that is "duh." Send a patch or a bug report if you like, we will certainly appreciate it.

    But don't bother pointing out that, gasp, bugs and bad code are in Slash. That's a given. That's why we are working so hard on it and devoting so many resources to it (four full-time developers, IIRC, not including CmdrTaco, plus several more, like Cliff, who are splitting time with Slash and other projects). The code was pretty good for what it was, but over time it got crufty, and now we are going back and fixing it. That's how these things work.

  • My suggestion would be to use redundant in those cases. Like this one.

    //rdj
  • Well, if you recall, I flamed you on the beta server about it and you fixed the bug. I'm just wondering if it's in 1.0.3 now.

    ---------------------------------
  • I don't understand the complaint. AFAICT (as far as I can tell, they released the source code, will continue to release the code, etc., so I don't see how they have "left the community", so to say. Please elucidate...

  • HTML formatting suggestion (Score:3)

    by Now15 ( 9715 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @06:28AM (#1046860) Homepage
    Remove the legacy HTML 3.2 code base, and replace with a fully HTML 4 compliant structure which is visually formatted with cascading style sheets. Allow users to specify their own style sheet from a hosted URL.

    The most important goal of this change should be code compactness, whereby repetitive use of bgcolor, font, align, etc is replaced with simplified CSS classes. This should significantly reduce bandwidth requirements per user, most important considering the ever-solid limit of 56k dial-up.

    While it is nowhere near valid HTML 4, users of the very latest nightly builds of Mozilla (an important display bug was recently fixed), or the excellent IE5 for Windows (I hate Microsoft more than YOU do, but their HTML rendering engine is admittedly a work of art), can check out the following link here: whirlpool.net.au [whirlpool.net.au] .

    It's my hobby site with a slash-esque feel, written totally by hand and powered with Cold Fusion (it's no PHP, but it's easy and fast). The design concept, programming, content and everything else was done by me.

    I would be very interested in donating a design structure for Slashdot, keeping in mind download times, the legacy look-and-feel, and HTML 4 compliance. test

    --

  • I don't know enough about mysql and other databases to know if something else would be better. That said, I am impressed with mysql, and my only significant problem with it for Slashdot is lack of replication, which is being developed now.

    I would absolutely not go to PHP, basically because I love Perl and don't like PHP.

    Would PHP increase development speed? No. I am very fast at developing with Perl, and I don't see how developing in another language would be faster. Even if I could learn PHP real well, I would still be as fast or faster in Perl. For other people, it might increase development speed, I dunno. Not for me, certainly.

    Would PHP be able to keep up with traffic? Probably, as much as Perl can.

    Would PHP be faster than Perl? Of course not.

    Would PHP require less memory than Perl? I don't know. I've heard it would.

    Would PHP make it more maintanable and expandable by other people? If those people knew PHP better than Perl, yes. If they knew Perl better than PHP, no. "Maintainability" is a function of good programming practices, not language. My Perl programs and modules are far more maintainable than a lot of C, C++, Python, and PHP code out there. And there are far less maintainable than others of the same languages. The language is mostly irrelevant in this respect.

    And in that line of thought, objectively speaking, it is a clear fact that moving to PHP would make Slash less maintainable, since the developers working on the project know and like Perl a lot better.

    This stupid PHP advocacy is about as useful and as interesting as BSD vs. Linux. If you like PHP, use it. I don't give a damn. But don't try to make me feel silly or stupid or wrong for using Perl, just so you can feel better about your personal decision to use PHP. It won't work. I am proud to use Perl, and love it, and the best emotion you can get out of me is pity, not because you are using a language I feel to be less useful and interesting and mature, but because you have little better to do with your time.
  • A little off-topic, but important to /. and /.'ers

    Sometimes I notice bugs that do not seem to be in the Slashcode per se, but seem to be affecting Slashdot alone. Often these are not consistent ongoing bugs, but transient, lasting 1-3 days.

    One example: one weekend, my BBC Science slashbox was filled with VA/Linux corporate links instead of articles. The problem was reproducible (on my account at least) from different machines.

    I realize this may be due to changes and updating (both software and hardware), but I am of the opinion that 'bugs don'f fix themselves'. I have reported a few to slashcode, but clearly this was some sort of config error at /.

    Also, it took me quite a bit of searching before I was moderately confident that Slashcode was the place to go. This should be in the FAQ, or better, be a separate entry in the upper left corner, along with FAQ, privacy, submit story, etc.

    Slashdot: every responsible site needs a good site specific bug reporting mechanism! How would you feel about *any* company that linked you to the BBS software manufacturer, under the presumption that the underlying code may be flawed but their own site implementation and administration was perfect?

    No one knows better that /.'ers how important bug reporting is. Why do we have to hunt for that link? It needs to be prominent, in several places around the site, including the 'front page'
    _____________
  • "...give users the ability to remove their own comments, maybe with a karma penalty or something"

    Sorry, no can do because of a little database principle known as "referential integrity." Let me explain: the comments are threaded, so if you remove your comment and I have replied to it, where's my comment supposed to link to? Nowhere, so it's orphaned. The practical effect is that if I posted a comment and didn't like how the commentary below mine went, I could orphan an entire thread. Similarly, deleting a moderated post would orphan the "moderations" done to the record.

    However, the idea could be improved by saying "allow a user to delete his/her own unmoderated post if it has no other comments linked to it." Without diving back into the v1.03 code base, I'm not sure if it is possible or if the folks at /. would like to implement your suggestion, but as with everything else -- it has to be done with alot of though as to to other effects.

  • Yeah, which is why I pointed you over to SourceForge to look for yourself. :-) Although, I should add that if it is working on Slashdot, then yes, it is most likely on SourceForge, since no change gets to Slashdot code (unless someone is Bad) without going through CVS on SourceForge.

    But for your amusement, I went over myself to find it. Look here [sourceforge.net].
  • I added a special "Slashdot" bug group on SourceForge [sourceforge.net] yesterday, so you can submit your Slashdot bugs in the same place, but tag them as specific to Slashdot if you like.

    And yeah, I suppose this should be somewhere on the site in a FAQ or something. I just mentioned it to CowboyNeal.
  • At some point, will the "Plain Old Text" posting option get fixed so that it really posts exactly what gets typed?

    You know, like not processing tags and not removing anything that looks like a tag?

    (Previewing, I see now that it has just somehow been swapped with the "Extrans" option.)

  • Make it so that more than one adjective can be applied to posts

    This information is available today. If you click on the #cid of a comment, it shows a breakdown of the moderation so far.

    But it would be nice if this information were part of the header of each comment on the main page.

  • Okay, so I agree with what your saying that it's basicly a matter of preference.

    Ofcourse a Perl expert is faster with Perl, and a PHP expert is faster with PHP.

    But, since I asked about a rewrite from scratch, I could imagine there would be more people who can follow PHP than follow Perl, because PHP is (simulair) to C.

    right / wrong ? (not starting a flamewar here, just asking for oppionions :)

  • Re:If... (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yahoGINSBERGo.com minus poet> on Friday May 26, 2000 @07:01AM (#1046869) Homepage Journal
    Golden Rules of Programming:

    • Keep layers to a minimum (interfaces are SLOW and that's an easy spot for bugs to creep in)
    • Keep the number of daemons/threads BELOW OR EQUAL to the number of CPUs.
    • Where speed is critical, write it yourself, inline.
    • In any program, (Bugs)/(No. of components * No. of lines) = Constant

      • Given these, let's look at PHP/MySQL. You've got the web server, PHP, Zend, the Zend Optimizer, the PHP application, the database driver, the database server and the database itself.

        That's a lot of components, and a LOT of overhead in lines of code. And that means lots of bugs.

        IMHO, the only conclusion I can reach is that, if I were to write a Slash-like system, I would start by throwing out the web server. It doesn't really DO anything for you, it just copies data from one place to another. A 4 or 5 line program could do that. That gives you enormous speed-up (by freeing up RAM as well as by having a much faster server).

        After the webserver, I'd have to throw out the database. Each URL points to a unique entry, so I can just as easily use sparse arrays and hashing. A database is just wasted overhead.

        That leaves PHP, Zend and the Zend optimizer. Since the rest is now direct, in-line code, you're better off with C. This removes 3 packages and 5 interfaces, all of which would rip out yet more bugs.

        In the end, the entire Slash/Perl|PHP/DB/httpd gumph, with the potential for a huge number of security holes and other assorted bugs, could be replaced by a much smaller, specialised C app that did everything.

        (In practice, I doubt anyone'd ever want to write such an app. The Unix practice of reusable components has proven good enough, to the point that everything is done that way, now, even if for any given task, it's horribly inefficient and very prone to errors.)

  • Well, they didn't exactly get swapped. From what I understand (and this stuff all predates me), Plain Text was always designed to process HTML tags, but it would add in stuff like <P> tags for you atuomatically. Perhaps it is ill-named, but oh well. :-)

    Exttrans was designed to take its place; it prints what you put in there, after "fixing" your < and > and & to be &lt; and &gt; and &amp;.

  • Correct, but the problem with XSL is that it is somewhat of a proc hog when run server-side, as you have to re-purpose your pages for each user. While you have to do this anyway for custom pages on /., they don't usually do this by browser.

    I like XSL, but it would appear to be a zero sum gain over HTML4.1Transitional(or XHTML) and CSS.

  • But rewriting from scratch, the developers here now already know more about Perl. You cannot take people out of the equation.

    And maybe PHP is similar to C, but so is Perl. And far more people know Perl than PHP. So I don't see how you could say more people can follow PHP than Perl. If you are talking about ugly, poorly written Perl, then I suppose more people could good PHP than ugly Perl. And more people could follow good Perl than ugly PHP. And more people could folllow good Perl than good PHP, since few people know PHP, compared to those that know Perl.

    Honestly, are you just fishing for someone to say that PHP is clearly, without a doubt, a better choice for such a project? It is not going to happen from any reasonable person. And it is not going to be the case that a reasonable person is going to say that Perl is clearly, without a doubt, a better choice. Many factors come into it. In this case, Perl is the better choice because of many factors, some of which have to do with the language, some of which have to do with the people involved. Get different people, and you might get a different answer. And in the end, if you can get the job done, then why does it matter?
  • 1. Yes it was tongue in cheek. I don't know what code the original post guy was complaining about (that post was oh so helpful) but I'm also sure it can't be new code. I also know that I don't know SQL worth a damn and I've got a few database driven sites up, so anything can happen.
    2. I keep forgetting that slashcode is up on SourceForge. My bad.
    3. I'm sick of general "your code sucks" comments too. I see them all the time. Constructive comments are good. Specific comments are good. "Slashdot bites" is a troll that I shouldn't have responded to, but hey, what's done is done.

  • Of course, somebody will need to re-write the templates for /. and some of the validators. One problem: all of the templates use upper-case elements, and suffer from a severe "quote-lack", since even numbers need to be quoted. Most of the empty elements do not have a trailing />. A lot of the code validates out any element with a /> ending.

    These things do not make it impossible to redo Slashdot, just darnde difficult.

  • Every time you ask about his release, they'll keep him in captivity for another 24 hours...

    KEEP CmdrTaco IN PRISON please.

    Will it work? ;)

  • Edit Comments [slashdot.org] -- do not display scores. Check it. Don't worry about karma, unless you go negative. Then create a new account.

    This site has become such a troll pit, if you even think about posting something without a score bonus (which is usually useless on the second tier of comments) some ac will waste /.'s resources to tell you that you are a karma whore. I usually check no +1 because I don't think my comment needs to be above another's. If that's whoring then I am a whore.

  • People who get the +1 can post a comment without the +1 by checking a box. This is a good thing to do if the message is not particularly informative, insightful, interesting, funny, etc. People who post mediocre comments at a score of 2 deserve to get an "overrated" moderation.

    This is most certainly true in most respects. If I respond to a tier 1 message or lower, the +1 comes off. I only use +2 if I make a big post, write about a subject I like, or post at the top level after 100+ posts have been made. Something could be said for selective use of this feature. I think, however, that it should read "Score +1 bonus" and the check specifically turns it on. That may help curb the problem.

  • Aargh! That little green gif is the main reason I run in lite mode! The image server should have this, the most popular image on /. cached by now. Then again, it doesn't add to the visual style one iota, so I even question the need for its existence.

    ps. it is better with the new servers, I can now use regular mode again.

  • Be not ashamed. The DB Libraries in most *nicies use esentially flat files to store one key/value pair. So does tie in perl. I don't think this is much of a programming sin. A programming sin would be to Write a complex structure for something that is simple in real life. It may not be too "organized" in a plain format file, but at least it is usually human-readable. Pack and unpack are elegant for this particular use as well.

  • I have to disagree with many of the other posters - I've found that web sites with CSS often render poorly with my browser. I'm in favor of simplified HTML that lets the browser do most of the formatting. So what if the colors are bad? A preferences panel for color choices will take care of that. There's no reason to make major changes to Slashcode.
  • In my last company we had a UUNET line. Even when overall usage was low slashdot would hang like hell on me.
    At home on a 56k (Freeserve, UK) link it would go through fine.

    I thought that the banner ads were hanging the page load, because UUNET had poor routing to the banner ad sites.

    In my new company (AT&T line) slashdot loads just great.

    It might also have something to do with the fact that Slashdot has been completely revamped over recent weeks.

  • How about having a mode where posts of different scores are given different shades of grey... score 5 would be bold and black, score 0 a barely readable light grey and score -1 white! We could tell at a glance how high a score a post has. (Perhaps we could even have flamebait in red?). Yes, I know this is silly.

    Score -1, stupid.

  • In your opinion, what defines a 1.0 release?
  • It's apparently fixed because I could not meta-moderate as of last week, but it didn't invite me to meta-mod (Have you M2ed today? -- does it still do that?). I had to go to metamod.pl myself.

    Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

  • You can use XSL/whatever-transformations-you-desire to spit it out as HTML (or XHTML) from the server side today

    I know this. For the last twelve months, I've worked on little else. Trust me, that's not a good choice for building any Slashcode version in the "near future".

    Similarly, neither is client side XML. You can get away with that on msdn.microsoft.com/xml/, where you know anyone connecting is going to understand the issue, even if they are using a non-IE browser. You'd have to be pretty brave though to try it in the Linux-loving mosh-pit of Slashdot !

  • Keep the number of daemons/threads BELOW OR EQUAL to the number of CPUs.

    I suppose by this you mean that the number of daemons/threads SPAWNED from a single user request keeps at n-1 in relationship to the processor. At my Concentric-hosted site, I have to keep it under 1 thread per script or it will kproc me. That isn't so bad, since it keeps me from doing stupid things like globbing massive directories and the like when I can just do an opendir/readdir and run the results through grep. I take up one read that way.

    Given these, let's look at PHP/MySQL. You've got the web server, PHP, Zend, the Zend Optimizer, the PHP application, the database driver, the database server and the database itself.

    Actually, on one server I work with PHP and Apache are compiled against each other, we don't use Zend, and the MySQL can't be helped. However, it is nice in the fact that our editors don't need to worry about setting up the ODBC every time, or even writing out headers every time, as php does a lot of this for you. It already knows where mysql is and so on.

    On my personal site, I use perl. I use it because:

    it's on almost every server out there.

    It's mostly backend stuff, and

    It is a programmer's language, and not just a programming language. Larry thinks about how hard it would be to progrom something, and adds functions accordingly.

    IMHO, the only conclusion I can reach is that, if I were to write a Slash-like system, I would start by throwing out the web server.

    If you wanted to get really technical, you don't even need a webserver. You could do the whole thing through text in a telnet session like a mud or a old-fashioned bbs. You can even write your own caching and load-balancing software to keep it up. But you don't have to. There is already a framework in place to do this. In fact the next Linux kernel will have khttpd, and you won't even need a webserver unless you want to do dynamic content. Then the program you mentioned above would be quite nice. As above so below.

    (In practice, I doubt anyone'd ever want to write such an app. The Unix practice of reusable components has proven good enough, to the point that everything is done that way, now, even if for any given task, it's horribly inefficient and very prone to errors.)

    In essence, a lot of the programs mentioned in your post already are quite debugged, and checked for security by the "thousands of eyes" looking over the code. Your proposition would only be safe if you followed in their footsteps and copied their code. However, You could just use their software and save yourself the trouble. Why build the cow when you can run the milk for free? <ducks>

  • Re:"overrated" needed for automatic +1 (Score:3)

    by Anomalous Canard ( 137695 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @08:48AM (#1046887)
    I think that the check box should be used to get your' +1, i.e. the default is the normal posting level and, furthermore, that your karma should go down by 1 for each +1 bonus you give yourself.

    Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
  • Don't be silly. A means for someone to replace their post with a [This post has been deleted] notice would allow what has been requested without violating "referential integrity".

    Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

  • I think that the check box should be used to get your' +1, i.e. the default is the normal posting level and, furthermore, that your karma should go down by 1 for each +1 bonus you give yourself.

    Wow! You hit the nail right on the head! That would be a perfect solution! you'd have to spend your karma to get a bonus. That way everyone over 2 can get a +1 message, but it will cost them. Now to go about diffing it... It would include changes to the global config, the posting system and some user display (to finally tell you what you got +1 on) for this to work.

  • Thanks! (Score:1)

    by D3 ( 31029 )
    I was just hoping that Taco, et. al. would read this and know that their hard work is appreciated.
  • I've thought about this for my slashsite. The problem would be changing the colors of all the little rounded corner graphics, and of the ones that tile within table cells to form borders and boundaries. My site has a number of graphics that have colored gradients on them, too; presenting an even greater challenge.

    It could be done, of course. But it would be a bit of work with a good graphics library.

  • Thanks. I've been amused. Now back to hacking perl for work.

    ---------------------------------
  • Something that meets the goals set for a 1.0.0 release. In this case, it was certain features and bugfixes. We added those features and fixed those bugs, and therefore had a 1.0.0 release.
  • You picked the code that is actually the oldest code in Slash (significantly older than the MySQL book). It's being changed. Schemas are being changed, code is being changed. You found some obviously crufty code that needs to get changed, that is being changed. Good for you.
  • My route to Slashdot has four hops on UUnet and then 12 on exodus.net .

    I only mentioned this in the first place because it doesnt just seem like normal loss:

    I never have any icmp loss; and the HTTP requests always connects immediately --- but no data ever comes. It's not as if it loads slowly or loads part of the code, there's nothing.

    Sometimes it will time out, but sometimes I get a server error page (not a browser error) 301 or 312, saying that the page did not exist or something.
    This is usually around the wee hours of the morning, in American time, btw.
    It only happened since the server upgrade.
  • give users the ability to remove their own comments
    There's a better solution than this, I think, which I've advocated for a while: Let users apply negative moderation to their own posts, whenever they want to, with no karma penalty. Presumably this could be done from the "user info" page.

    This way, nobody would be able to actually "erase" a comment, but foolish or accidental posts could be painlessly swatted down by their authors.
  • Fixing the schema would take about 5 minutes wouldn't it? And the part about the primitive join holds for any database not just MySQL, so it could have been fixed before Mr. Dubois' book was printed right?
  • ..because I dared criticize the almighty Slash code. I tell you how to fix it, and the reply is "do a patch". You can all blow me.
  • Yeah, I know I'm not the only one saying it, but I don't see enough posts saying it yet:

    Thanks for releasing your CGI code, and double thanks for getting the running code and the public source in sync.

    I was one of the more annoyingly whiny complainers before the 0.9 slash release; here's hoping that now that both the slash code and school are out I can do something with it this summer..
  • Yeah, I'm on your side. What do you pay these guys for anyway? What? You don't pay them? Oh....

  • I'm going to refuse to moderate from now on because of its negative effect on my karma.

  • There's a better solution than this, I think, which I've advocated for a while: Let users apply negative moderation to their own posts, whenever they want to, with no karma penalty.

    I actually think this is a great idea for 'removing' posts in general, except it fails to solve the only real reason I (for one) would ever want to see a post removed, and that's if it violated some sort of law (again, the example being the Microsoft letter). Moderating it down still allows it to be in the system, which could eventually be a legal hassle. I know there are logical referential reasons why posts can't just *poof*, but allowing the user to replace his post with message (sort of away thing), either a [ this post has been deleted ] or more personalized [ I have been asked by greedy corporate lawyers to remove this post or be sued. Their address is so contact them. ] message could solve both problems as well as inform. Obviously, only registered accounts would qualify; ACs could fall under the jurisdiction of Slashdot. Also, I think this should come with a heavy karma penalty, because self-censorship affects others. Allowing others to mark their posts down without penalty could lead to the removal of some very insightful threads from the common discussion.

    Just like you can put up an offensive or illegal sign in a community park, you should also be able to take it down and put a conciliatory or explanatory note back up in its place.
  • > Every time you ask about his release, they'll keep him in captivity for another 24 hours..

    crontabs are being edited across the land as we speak...
  • One thing I'd like is for something like extrans used to be - Similar to plain text in that <p> would be added, but you could add links with <a>, for times when you didn't want HTML for markup, but rather for embedding useful info. <p> doesn't take that much effort, true, but it was still useful.

    I believe that was a bug, but it was a useful one :)

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