Slashdot Mirror

Norm asks: "How does one use the WWW to learn about the current and future state of the human genome project, corporate research into potential genetic manipulation of humans, and human Genetic Engineering in general? This is a subject, that while touched upon in the news and exploited in popular culture (e.g., the film 'Gattaca'), does not receive the fact-based, in-depth coverage it deserves. Right now, we are facing a serious social, political and philosophical dilemma: what happens when those of us in our 20s-30s are in our 70s-80s, and the new generation of people are genetically enhanced super-humans? Ideas? Pointers?"

Thanks to Norm J for the pointer over to ESR's post-Microsoft interview. Fairly typical situation, but it's interesting to comments from "the inside".

Thanks to Norm J for pointing out the recent Doc Searls' article that talks about the growing number of ways to earn money while writing open Source code. This article is especially interesting in light of CoSource and SourceXChange. So, buckle down, and have fun-get paid to do what you love.

Andy Tai writes "Eric Raymond and a number of other people have written an open letter to Microsoft about their consideration to "open source" Windows. Basically they want Microsoft to free important parts of Windows source code in the proper way, in light of Microsoft VP's quote: "There are all different types of ways you can do open source. We are looking into whether we should get into open source initiatives." The letter can be seen over here. " Update: 04/09 06:41 by H :Add your voice to the petition setup by Norm to call upon Microsoft to Open Source Windows.

Harry McKee sent us a good story about a new handheld maker that is going to try and undercut the Pilot. Here's the good news-cheaper price, same processor, and no WinCEing to be done. It will be using a different scripting language, called DaVinci. For more info from the company, Royal, check this story out. And well, hopefully this forces Pilot prices down.

John Hartnup sent us a Perl Script for tracking stuff that happens at Distributed.net. Speaking of Which, Slashdot has broken into the top 10 overall! Keep it going folks! Next, Matthew Kirkwood sent us a link to link to another linux support site. Third, Jesse Off sent us a link to another one of those silly You know you're a nerd when. Mostly Unix jokes. Pretty good. Next, Jason Poll sent us a link to a collection of online books, the site includes programming and Linux books apparently. Continuing along, David Sinck sent us a link to one of those James Bond super cars with fancy video doo dads. This one has instructions to build your own if you have tons of cash to drop on all sorts of strange hardware. It's really pretty cool. Lastly, Harry McKee sent us a link to an article about a Telepathic Clapper. Hopefully they can come up with an ad campaign less obnoxious than 'Clap On/Clap Off'

JEDIDIAH sent us this link where you can read about the US Postal Office using Linux to run OCR at the post office to help route our mail. Very cool stuff.

I know that many of you, just like me are just waiting for this to hit the mainstream, but check out this article where you can learn about researchers who are experimenting with directly interfacing rats brains and computers. Now when I can get some sort of hi speed net connection into my brain, life will be perfect. Thanks to Harry McKee for sending the nerdiest article so far in 1998.