Our first question comes from john beale who writes "I like Linux and use it for graphics and some development/hacking. However I have some nifty toys (Kodak DC120 digital camera, Turtle Beach Fiji soundcard) which are not supported at all under Linux and others (eg. HP Photosmart film scanner) which have very limited support. Much as I'd prefer not to, I have to boot Win95 to use these devices. Question: how can we encourage hardware manufacturers to either support Linux directly (ha) or release info so others can write drivers?" Hit the link below and let's see what you have to say about this.

Allright, I've sort of informally decided that I'm going to post SlashNET related stuff in the evenings so we don't clutter the normal news each day to badly. Let me start off by saying that opening night was pretty cool. Nice to see everybody in there. Hit the link below and read a few of my comments about the network, as well as a poll on services.

Allright folks, it's ready. Join on SlashNET (irc.slashdot.org for a random server, hit the link below for the full list). It's not out to compete with other networks, but rather to provide ya'll with a place to hang out and talk about "Stuff that Matters". Eventually Slashdot will have some nutty IRC based i/o, so hang in there, and we'll start having some real fun. I think that might be what I do after I wrap up the Mystery Project (which is also RSN).

Is it just me, or has today been looong as heck? Allright, first off, the Slashdot Q&A thing is still coming, and we have a (ahem) Victim to start routing questions. Contact Clifton Wood with your questions. Linux, or other. Easy or Hard, Bring it on. We'll post it, and let the Slashdot Readers try to answer it! Next, Sam Smith sent me A Psion 5 Review thingee. It's funny and interesting if you need a distraction. Lastly, Matthew Miller Sent us a link to some interesting info about MacOS 10.

Well folks, today it would be the twenty second anniversary of the day of my birth. Happy Birthday to me. (if you really want to give me a present, buy CD-Now CD for yourself! If, say a thousand of you do, I'll have enough credit to buy tunes until I'm 23!) More importantly, we're looking to get a couple more servers onto the SlashNET in the next few days. If you're interested, please contact Weez. I'm hoping to have the network up rsn. Virtual cake and ice cream for everyone *grin*

Once again, don't be surprised if you see errors this afternoon. Dave and I are meddling again. Something new- check out the 'code' link to the left. This is going to be where I link anyone using 'ultramode' (if you don't know, don't worry). Currently there is a perl module ready, but when everyone gets their URLs in, it'll be much more complete. Lastly, hopefully in the next few days we're going to have a small IRC network running for Slashdot readers. If you're interested in running a server, you should contact Weez. Web pages will be up soon for that too. Oh, and if you have a good name for the Slashdot Q&A thingee, I'm still looking for one...

wil suggested an excellent. If people have questions (on Linux, Unix, or whatever) they could send them in and we'll post interesting questions in a Forum for Slashdot readers to try to help with. Good idea? Bad idea? My code can be extended easily to add another story type (along with features, book reviews and articles) so we can keep them seperate from the actual news. It would be a cool way for all you who voted 'skilled' or 'guru' on the poll to help out all those people who voted 'newbie' *grin*. Updated The feedback has been very positive. I want to find someone to help coordinate the effort on the Slashdot team. If you think you can handle it, and are interested in hard work, send me some mail.

Allright let it never be said that I can't take a joke: Scott James Remnant sent us a link to his Nerd News Generator. Basically, its another generator, but this one (ahem) generates moderately humorous slashdot-esque news articles. It needs some refining (I've actually been toying with creating a parody of Slashdot called Dotslash, and writing fake news purely for fun, but generating them automatically is pretty cool too)

So now I'm finishing up the mess I started yesterday. Lots more minor stuff that needs fixing and tweaking. So don't be surprised if you see any errors today. I'm not pulling the cron job offline, so things should function normally.

Oh, and don't be surprised by the book reviews that follow this article on the homepage. We are reorganizing the book reviews now, and so we are reposting them. Under the new system, you can post comments to them as well.

Another interesting side note- you may or may not care, but as of this minute, we have 25,142 comments posted on Slashdot, as well as 1,053 stories (we lost several hundred of the older stories after the rewrite). It's pretty crazy. Updated Hardcore readers will want to read this. Updated Again! Cookies are fixed now. And just in time for The Simpsons :)

Dave and I are spending the afternoon fixing up Slashdot code today, so you may notice a few things. First, the cron job which updates Slashdot is offline this afternoon, so comments won't update every 60 seconds- we will run it manually every once and a while so things keep going though. Hit the link below if you're curious whats changing. Updated

As an escape from pumping lemmas, N-DFAs, Turing Machines and the like, I finally put the finishing touches on Rob's Amazing Poem Generator. It generates poetry based on either fortune, or a URL that you submit to it. Sometimes it produces crap, sometimes it is kinda eerie. Have I mentioned that I love perl recently?

ULINX has given Slashdot an award for being a Resource Leader, along with Freshmeat, LinuxHQ and Woven Goods. If that wasn't enough fun for one day, We also are now registered in the Top 100 on Worldcharts.com, although we seem to be in the Homepage catagory. The fun part about this thing is that they have a poll for their Global Chart. If All of Slashdot's readers follow this link and vote for me, I'll be a happy camper. In any case, thanks to both of these sites for the recognition.

So finals are next week, and I need to de-stress for a few hours before I start the hardcore studying. And what better way to waste my time then code features on Slashdot? The reason I mention this is that if you get start getting error messages in the next few hours, don't worry about it to much- it's just me breaking code. Hit the link below to read a few details about what I'm working on.

Allright for those of you who haven't been paying attention, I fully intend to open the Slashdot source. This has always been the plan. But first, hit the link below and let me say a few things about it. Updated

First let me just post a little celebration:Yesterday Slashdot had a new hits high- for the first time we broke 100,000 hits in a single day (that's pages, not counting images people). I'm happy as a clam. And the Slashdot T-Shirts should be ready RSN. Now the bad news:

A lot of email and posting has been flying around about Slashdot, Geek, OpenScape.org, and several other web sites, and I want to give my 2 cents. First, I thank the many of you who appreciate Slashdot so much, that you are willing to defend it so strongly- but a few of you went to far. Other web sites are entitled to do their thing. If you don't like their thing, stay here. If you don't like my thing, go there. Or read both. I work damn hard to make sure that as many people as possible enjoy slashdot, but that doesn't mean there can't be competition. Hit the link below for more.

Ok sorry already, stop emailing me! I forgot PowerPC from the poll booth! I reset the poll and added PowerPC. It definately deserved to be on the list, and forgetting it only proves that I shouldn't mess with poll questions early in the morning.

Side note, I'm kinda debating making weekends a little different on Slashdot. Since the 'normal' news slows down, I was thinking about filling the space out with funny posts, older, but still interesting links etc. Since we typically post half as many news articles on weekends, should I kinda stockpile this sorta stuff all week, or does everyone like it sorta jumbled together? If nothing else, it would give me some variety *grin*.

<RANT>Ok I'm going to ask this just one more time. Stop bashing the comments threading. I am very sick of hearing this. We have a flat mode coded, but it has some problems that need fixin'. There will be an alternate homepage that links to flat versions of each story. Buuut I'm doing the best I can to stay on top of a job, a course load, Slashdot, and whatever bit of a life I have left, so please be patient.

Mainly there are a few people who feel the need to post that they hate threads in every other post. It's only a few people, but it's really making me mad. Worse, it is taking way to much time to delete all of these annoying off-topic posts. The worst case scenario is that we don't post any comments until someone has had a chance to confirm the validity of the post. I don't want to do this, I want things nice, open and friendly, so I'm begging that those few offenders (you know who you are) play nicely so I'm not forced to make this sort of very nasty decision.

I've got a gigantic list of cool stuff that's going to happen here right after exams are done. Everyone will be happy. Now relax for a couple of weeks so I can pass my finals</RANT>

Ok, two things today. First is that I've actually finally almost finished designing the Slashdot T-Shirts. They are basically the logo you see next to this story, and will available soon. If you are definately going to be buying a shirt, I'd like you to email BEP so we can figure out how many of these buggers to print. We're open to suggestions (mugs, hats, stickers etc) so feel free to express interest in these sorts of items as well.

The second note is a bit trickier- it pertains to credit on articles on Slashdot. A lot of egos have been bruised, and I just want to explain things so nobody else gets angry. Hit the link below to read more.

Just going to take a minute here to throw a few notes out to everyone so I can stop getting a few of these FAQs in my mailbox. hit the link below to read several notes, some of which are quite important and some of which, well, really don't matter much in the grand scheme of things. I cover fonts, NS2/Opera, Flat Comments, Mugs, CDs, Books, Southpark and MST.

Allright I have a whole slew of announcements worth making related to the site, so I'm just going to get them out in a bundle. First off, the variable width thing is now working pretty well. Hopefulyl everybody likes it. Next, we've been having server problems- I'm not sure if its Mysql, Mod_perl, or one of my scripts, it just seems that occasionally the database connections slip up. Quite wierd. Hit the link below to read a bunch more notes.