Hemos and I are going to try to answer questions today at 3:00 PM EST, on irc.slashnet.org in #forum. Specifically we're going to try to keep the questions on the subject of subscriptions. There are a lot of misunderstandings about a few things, and we wanna clear them up. We'll post a log in this story after the forum is done. Any questions can be /msged to Questions the bot and forum discussion can be had in #forum.d.

Two Slashdot (and Slashcode) readers -- Alex McLintock of Openweb Analysts Ltd, and Dave Aiello of CTDATA -- have graciously contributed their impressions of the new O'Reilly book Running Weblogs With Slash. Since the Slash code is now used to run sites covering a huge number of topics (fly fishing, mountain biking, "news for nerds," etc.), it's time there was at least one printed reference to it.

You will likely notice a variety of changes in the comments system if you are logged in. Most of these changes surround the new 'Zoo' system which implements (among other things) a sort of killfile function, and much more. Logged in users have the ability to flag each other as Friends or Foes, and assign bonuses and penalties appropriately. So if a user annoys you, you can easily not read their comments any more. If you notice any bugs, feel free to submit them or let krow or me know.

It's been a long time since I posted an update about Slashdot but a few recent changes warrant me doing it. You should see the OSDN Navbar atop the page now. I don't like it any more then many of you, so if you log in, there is an option to disable it. (Click the 'X', or look in Preferences:Misc) A few more notes follow including the lowdown on subscriptions, formkey bugs, and AC filters.

Michael "Codetalker" Obersnel asks: "I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas on how to turn all that passionate talk on Slashdot (how I love it) into a political force that people will pay attention to. Like a lobby group or something similar. It seems that people tolerate the DMCA and spam enough to complain about it but not really do anything about. I think we could change that with some organization and a cohesive front. I'm not suggesting that Slashdot itself be responsible, only that the community take part. Like a micro-payment system to hire lawyers for topics we are interested in or some sort of petitioning system. I know I'd pay a buck to overturn the DMCA, free Dimitri, outlaw spam, protest license problems, protect the GPL etc."

On Tuesday, something terrible happened. The effects rippled through the world. And Slashdot was hit with more traffic than ever before as people grabbed at any open line of communication. When many news sites collapsed under the load, we managed to keep stumbling along. Countless people have asked me questions about how Slashdot handled the gigantic load spike. I'm going to try to answer a few of these questions now. Keep reading if you're interested.

Welcome to Slashdot, now running Slashcode 2.2. Since we never upgraded Slashdot to 2.0, this is a huge deal. The changes are numerous, but non-obvious unless you happen to be a fairly frequent user who actually hits most of the functionality on the site. Read on for an executive summary of major features and random props to folks that made it happen.

We're planning on making the final switch from Slashdot to Banjo tonight at around 8pm my time. User preferences changed after 6:30pm will be lost. Comments won't be. Around 8pm, Slashdot will stop providing dynamic pages: only the static homepage will be visible until we we complete the transition, which will hopefully take only however long it takes for us to incrementally update all the critical data. We should see you by 9.

Here's you chance to generate wasteful http traffic without even having to run unpatched IIS! We're ready to test Banjo, our new fancy setup w/ new code and new hardware. We plan to keep testing until we think the system is ready. You are also welcome to submit Bug Reports, although it would be helpful if you skimmed the list of bugs before submitting new ones so we don't have 300 of you tell us that your user info page has other people's comments listed on it again. The new hardware is mostly in place, but the code hasn't been fully optimized yet, so run your wgets... write your bots... whatever makes you happy, but please don't be malicious: just try to load and submit web pages. And don't be surprised, its gonna go up and down like a yo yo as we fix things.

After far too long in development, Slashdot is ready to move to the latest version of Slashcode. To this end, we really need people to test our development box, aka Banjo. This is not a load test, so please don't beat the crap out of it (yet!). Please read comments, post comments, and test out wacky new features like Journaling and the assorted new messaging options. It is mostly identical but there are several cool surprises. We have many optimizations still to add, and only have a fraction of our "real" hardware on Banjo so don't worry about speed, instead look for things that don't work right (or at all!) and send those bug reports. (Known issues: imported comments are misattributed, and comment searching is disabled. Don't report these things please ;))

Rainstorm writes "MSNBC has a story on Slashdot, with a good bit of history on the site and its own interpretation of the goals of the site. It also references some possible outcomes of the recent VA Linux announcement." Is anyone besides me sick of reading about Slashdot? I feel like they write them just to get us to link them, and we almost have to link them because hundreds of readers submit them thinking that I care that yet another web site is blabbing about Slashdot. Anyway the story covers a lot, although I'm not at all worried about "The Future of Slashdot". OSDN continues to be very supportive, and the Slashteam is almost ready to move Slashdot to the new code tree with all sorts of wacky new stuff (bug fixes, messaging, journals, and more) Oh, and their poll doesn't work under Konqueror, so I reposted it here cuz darn it, I'm curious ;)

It just so happened that both Nate and Hemos were back in town, and the result was yet another show. We talk about TiVo, Napster, and CmdrTaco and Hemos' recent trip to Japan.

The first hint that all was not well came at about 2 a.m. on Saturday, US eastern time, in the form of slow-loading pages. By 7 a.m. it was obvious that this was not a typical, easily-fixed, reboot-the-database problem. The network operations people were paged, but did not respond. Uh-oh.

I'm still not exactly clued in as to why we're back online, but hey, we are. Sometime saturday morning our Cisco router melted down. Ordinarily this would only be the end of the world, but none of our qualified personel were available to fix it, thus triggering the end of several nearby worlds as well. Props to Yazz, KurtG and Scott from Cisco for managing to help get us back online. We'll post more when we know it.

After far to much time in development, Slash 2.0.0, previously known as Bender is now released unto the cruel dark world. This code is of course the source that runs Slashdot, however 2.0 is far more advanced then the code you see here, to say nothing of utterly embarassing any other weblog software available for free, and written by us, and codenamed after a cartoon. Plans are already well underway to move Slashdot to the new code base soon enough. The features and fixes are to numerous to mention here but besides scouring the codebase of the evils that I originally devised, it installs easier, is more flexible and customizable, and has a variety of improvements for users and administrators alike. Props have to go out to CaptTofu, Pudge, Krow, Cliff, Jamie and CowboyNeal who all contributed to this code, and also to OSDN who let us all do it.

A number of people have asked about getting Slashdot on their Palm VIIs and such -- now the people at DigitalPaths have put together a Palm Query App. Download, install, and soon you too will be able to better justify your wireless Palm bill and test your provider's capacity. The best part of the app, IMHO, is the ability to specify the amount to download, so no nasty throughput surprises with an 800-comment story. And as completely unbiased source jamie says, that makes it better than Slashdot's light mode, but "of course, a starved, feral orangutan with razor-sharp claws and a taste for blood let loose in a daycare would be better than light mode." Thanks to DigitalPaths for their work.

Newsforge, Slashdot, Freshmeat, and all Mediabuilder sites are moving to FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT for its increased SMP capabilities, this move should be completed by Beltaine (May 1st), leaving enough preparation time before the festival to sacrifice a goat to the SCSI gods.

Seen Dairen writes "How would Slashdot function during a war or comparable crisis? Would it help people distribute critical information? Would it help people keep in touch with their friends and enemies? Would it help to prevent a war? So far it seems no person in extreme need has submitted to Slashdot, but if they do, how would we respond?"

After several years of reader requests, we finally cornered CowboyNeal long enough to do a Slashdot interview. Questions were posted last week. Today we brush aside the mask (or at least the hat) and get a glimpse of the real Jon Pater (aka CowboyNeal).

After many reader requests, we're finally getting around to interviewing the famed, mysterious CowboyNeal. He's more than a poll response, you know. He's the guy you go to if you have problems with your Slashdot user account -- or if you just generally need a cheerful face on a day you're feeling a little down. But who is the "real" CowboyNeal? Here's your chance to find out. Post questions below. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Da Man and run his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.