Ok, Salsa (the IRC bot) is really close to ready. I need to add the ability to send people URLs to the original article, and make it look pretty on the web side, but it's almost done. Unfortunately I won't finish it until at least this weekend because the next chunk of my life is dedicated to finishing The Mystery Project, which should be officially announced Wed. Afternoon. Nate and I will be on IRC in the evening to answer questions on SlashNET (Channel will be announced- maybe we'll beta test the bot :)

It's been a busy weekend. The finishing touches are now going on The Mystery Project. Nate has been coding like a crazy man making sure it works properly and I've been making sure that it looks perty when it gets done. Hopefully it'll be announced in the next day or two. We'll probably have a Q&A on SlashNET 'cuz there will be some questions. But this means I can get back to the Slash Source Code Release, as well as the Slashdot IRC Bot. Hopefully both of them will happen in the next week or so.

endisnigh writes "I am a smalltime sysadmin working in a cyber cafe in Dublin - my problem is that the linux server that we have here (redhat 5.1) attracts system crackers for some reason - people from a few different countries who seem to be portscanning etc.. I wouldn't consider myself totally green as regards to linux, but find it hard to get good up-to-date linux security advice that covers everyting from shadow passwords, to secure finger daemons to immutable file systems to just *exactly* what daemons don't need to be running on a mail/web/name server. I want answers! I want advice! I want cheesy poofs! "

Ben Burdick (weez) wrote in to tell us that SlashNET had its first forum last night. It was an impromptu discussion with several members of the freedows project with a lengthy Q & A session. Check out Weez's SlashNET home page for the complete log

Well folks, as everyone has noticed, we're having some problems. These problems are not being solved because after this weeks move, I don't yet have a phone line, and hence, no Internet Access. I'll hopefully solve this tomorrow and things will get back to normal. So bear with us- rest assured, this is pissing me off more than you guys (sigh).

BOredAtWork writes "Anybody have a DVD running under linux? I'm looking to buy a kit and add one (seeing ID4 in all its DVD glory on my TV would kick ass) to my box, but only if it works well under linux. Can anybody recommend a brand? Point me to an install Howto? "

Wade Naveja sent us This SF Examiner Piece where they explain what portals really are:A waste of corporate money trying to morph the Internet into your TV. Several people have jokingly suggested a Slashdot Portal (yeah, right). But in general, I'm curious what everyone thinks about the ideas.

So I go away for a few hours and everything blows up. No surprise I guess *grin*. For those who don't know, I've been moving this week. Well, trying to move anyway. The carpet (which should have been installed last week) didn't get in until last night at 7. But the furniture is inside (in gigantic piles!) and I finally have a few minutes to try to get things back in order around here. Anyway, my apologies, things should be back tomorrow soon- or at least, as soon as the phone lines at my house get installed (not for another week. Grrr).

Iris writes " I have a problem that i am sure slashdot readers could help with. I have a friend that has a class C block of IP's that is not in use. I know it is possible to create a IPsec, NAT, or L2TP tunnel between out machines so i can use his IP's on my network, but i can not find any good information on this. Can anyone help our suggest a place to look for information. And yes i have looked into PPTP but decided against it."

Nate, Dave and I rest easy now that Slashdot is up and running on the new machine. It's a P2/266 dual CPU board, with one CPU. Now we just need to wait for the second CPU to get back and we'll be cool. Things went pretty smooth (except for the part where we "Borrowed" the network connection from one of the other servers, that *ahem* was doing a backup). In any case, now we have a mountain of parts and will spend the rest of the day putting together machines for The Mystery Project, and an MP3 player for our living room in the new house.

So everybody remembers a few weeks ago when we tried to move the server, right? Well tomorrow we're going to finish the job (/me crosses fingers). VAResearch shipped us a CPU:It's a dual CPU box, this was #2, but since we're still waiting for #1, this one has been promoted. Tomorrow probably 11ish (I need to sleep in!) we'll be down for awhile. The existing machine is getting gutted for parts needed to complete The Mystery Project (which will be ready in the next couple of weeks even if it kills Nate and I *grin*). Things are going to be hairy around here for the next week or so as Hemos, Dave, and I are moving, hang in there, things will get back to normal.

bleachboy writes "We all know about VA Research and their fine complete system solutions for Linux, but I am the type of nerd who likes to put my computer together piece-by-piece. Can anyone recommend a hardware vendor (i.e. mobos, memory, cpu's, etc) who is known to be Linux-friendly? Not that it matters particularly when buying piecemeal hardware, but I like to support companies worthy of support! :) "

We scored our 10 millionth hit last night ladies and gentleman. It was a Linux 2.0.32 box at 9:49pm. The user was viewing the MS Terraserver Crashing Article, and they came from 129.97.33.92. Anyone wanna step up and take credit? Slashdot is now clipping along at over 2 million hits/month. If you feel this warrants a bit of a party, join me on irc.slashdot.org today in #10million.

Kevin Way is having trouble getting his Diamond Monster 3D to work properly under Linux. It's kind of a strange situation. Hit the link below to read his description and see if you can't help.

Several folks wrote in over the last 24 hours about a topic that I noticed, and I'm sure many of you have also. Geocities (hoster of millions of free web pages) has recently begun putting a geocities logo watermark on every page. This is in addition to that window that pops up every minute or two. What do people think? Is this fair? They are giving free hosting to millions, and can do anything they want, but that watermark has angered a lot of people. James S. Baughn wrote His opinions that you should read. Many people are even talking of fleeing Geocities, is it justified?

dr. claw writes "Does there exist any source of information regarding the size of the Linux game-purchasing market? I'm in the employ of a major game developer, and I have been unable to find any market research numbers regarding this market. Of course, any big game house is going to want some market research before it shells out the necessary development effort. Perhaps a poll might be able to shed some light on the question? I'm not asking how many people would buy a particular game's Linux port but rather how large the Linux game market is at the present. "

Okay... weds we asked for submissions of weird links for a conspiracy feature to coincide with the opening of the X-Files movie. What happened? Click the link below...

Ben FrantzDale writes "I am planing on installing Linux on my computer (Toshiba Satellite 200CDS 100MHz Pentium, 40MB RAM, 800ish MB HDD) I am now running Windows 95 using hard drive compression, which gives me 1.3 GB, enough for all my programs. I am wondering if anyone knows what sort of support Linux has for compression, or do I have to get a new HDD or kill windows. Thanks, Ben "

Nate wrote in to tell us that PC Magazine has put up their quarterly top 100 links online, and Slashdot is officially on the list. I've sorta stopped mentioning Slashdot's awards here, but I figured that this one was worth the time.

We've got an easy one today. Jeremy Lepel writes " A friend and I have recently updated our kernels from 2.0.33 to 2.0.34. I had ppa support included in the kernel in 2.0.33 and he had it as a module. With the recent upgrade we've both included PPA v1.46 into the new kernel, but neither of us have been able to get the damn thing to work. I noticed during the boot process that it probes two of the parallel ports and then the scsi reports no paritions found. I've set my parallel port to match the 0x278 which is being probed on startup but this didn't change anything. I read in the README.ppa about a "lilo/loadlin command line" where you set "ppa=0x278,0" but I can't figure this out, either. Any help would be appreciated!"