Slashdot Mirror

Nope, not gonna; if you don't understand the difference between article structures and weighted lists, son, I'm not giving you my card as a cheat sheet. Also not leaving my five-digit Slashdot ID at "the reception" (ooh, is there cake?!) either -- and you're lucky I didn't simply identify Schilling as a pitcher for a Boston-based Yankees farm team. Go Rockies.

(Love the rest of the suggestions, everyone else, and am genuinely embarrassed that I left off the entire Futurama crew; this page was after all sitting in my research stack for the duration. One more that no one seems to have noted here so far, BTW: Jenny McCarthy. She was on the list for the medical-inquiry section for her autism work; when the inevitable editing-down process began, she was alas cut.) Thanks for reading the piece!

Many of the people involved in making Futurama are degree heavy. Degrees aren't sufficient for geekdom, but watching the show and DVD commentaries gives evidence that they are true geeks.

Ken Keeler has a Ph.D. in applied math and a masters in electrical engineering
David X Cohen has a Masters in theoretical computer science
Bill Odenkirk has a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry
Jeff Westbrook has a Ph.D. in computer science

list taken from interview with Cohen at http://frontwheeldrive.com/david-x-cohen-futuramas-head-in-a-jar

Discuss amongst yourselves:
The SF show, Star Trek, a show that tries to make its techno-babble sound serious, comes off as imminently mockable because of a lack of scientific grounding among its writers and producers. On the other hand, Futurama, a SF cartoon whose science is meant to sound funny, actually has some serious math and science due to the backgrounds of the executive producer and some of the writers.

SharkJumper

At this point, however, it's comparable to documenting every contributor to steam engines and printing presses -- we don't know what's important and what's not to people fifty years in the future. Cisco routers use XModem and ZModem to transfer IOS images to the firmware -- seeing interviews with the people who designed the protocol helps me see their decision-making process at the time, and design better protocols today.

Also, the music used in the documentary is composed by Paul Slocum, who uses an Atari 2600 along with dot-matrix printers and other assorted 80's computer hardware in the composition of his music. Band website and random interview, along with Atari 2600 programming for more information.

a good, fictitious, interview interview with Philip K Dick

For maths you might want to try the books of Ian Stewart.

As a libertarian, I favor strong property rights -- but as a student of the economics of software, I observe that developers often best serve their ends by voluntarily relinguishing those rights. Emphasis on the "voluntarily"; I would oppose any law that forbade closed-source licenses.

Thus, I'm tactically with the FSF in their goal of promoting open software. But I'm philosophically opposed to RMS's aim of abolishing intellectual-property rights in software. Open source should be pursued because it works, not for quasi-religious reasons. For me, talking the "you win if you do this" economics rather than the "thou shalt" language of morality and ethics is a tactical choice. You win more hearts and minds with the former, at least among audiences with the power to change business practices.

It took a bit of digging but I found a page with this explanation:

Will we ever see your homepage return, more specifically the "fire, explosions, and antics" section? I'd be glad to put a mirror of it on the extra space I have in my home account...

I'm not sure... maybe but honestly it was really out of date. It was kind of funny originally but it's over 4 years old now...




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