Slashdot Mirror

GWB should issue an executive order to allow the detention and internment of these zealots.

I found this story pretty moving. A gossip columnist comments on how meaningless all the stuff she's built her career on is in the grand scheme of things. Talks about the future of celebrity and entertainment.

I found this story pretty moving. A gossip columnist comments on how meaningless all the stuff she's built her career on is in the grand scheme of things. Talks about the future of celebrity and entertainment.

Yeah, that'll work.

From Newsday's review of the picture:

Their guiding ethos: a dedication to open sourcing all of their innovations because, after all, information should be free.

Done laughing?

I know I'm not.

Planetunreal has this story about the work by Digitalo Design on VRND: the real-time virtual reality reconstruction of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. (There's also this article in Newsday Online.) Digitalo has modeled other stuff with the Unreal engine, including twelve acres of the Everglades.

Slashdot user "Vito" mentioned this in a comment on a July story, and appears to be working on a virtual reality office building tour package called "Unrealty" (being used but no yet being distributed).

P.S.: UT starts shipping for the Playstation 2 this week (before the PS2 itself ships), according to this story.

"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up

It warms my heart to see that even the nutty transhumanists who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality don't take themselves seriously enough to login or even create a dummy account. Let me save this futurist bullshit on the mini-tapepunch machine in my flying car or I'll just have the robot butler/babysitter/security-guard do it for me.

Hit pause on your Star Trek marathon tape and try to join us in the real world, ok Spock? I like sci-fi too, but extrapolating one idea or two to their irrational end to produce some lame Star Trek-esque fantasy is simply not convincing. memepool recently posted a similiar rant.

It warms my heart to see that even the nutty transhumanists who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality don't take themselves seriously enough to login or even create a dummy account. Let me save this futurist bullshit on the mini-tapepunch machine in my flying car or I'll just have the robot butler/babysitter/security-guard do it for me.

Hit pause on your Star Trek marathon tape and try to join us in the real world, ok Spock? I like sci-fi too, but extrapolating one idea or two to their irrational end to produce some lame Star Trek-esque fantasy is simply not convincing. memepool recently posted a similiar rant.

This is the sort of lies your local newspaper prints (from Newsday, 2000-07-25:

"Respect for private property serves a bedrock of civilization. And despite the difficulties of enforcing property rights, this is a core function of government, which shouldn't be diminished in the zeal to promote technology. Unfortunately for many in our society, people feel they are entitled to art or other goods, and no entrepreneur or business has the right to control those items with so-called "unfair" prices. Such thinking is not just a failure to understand the free market, but a failure to understand adulthood. "

Do you believe they might be referring to you? Have you read your Constitution lately? Do you know how to send an email to the Editor of Newsday or your local newspaper? Or do you care only enough to spew off on Slashdot?

This is the sort of lies your local newspaper prints (from Newsday, 2000-07-25:

"Respect for private property serves a bedrock of civilization. And despite the difficulties of enforcing property rights, this is a core function of government, which shouldn't be diminished in the zeal to promote technology. Unfortunately for many in our society, people feel they are entitled to art or other goods, and no entrepreneur or business has the right to control those items with so-called "unfair" prices. Such thinking is not just a failure to understand the free market, but a failure to understand adulthood. "

Do you believe they might be referring to you? Have you read your Constitution lately? Do you know how to send an email to the Editor of Newsday or your local newspaper? Or do you care only enough to spew off on Slashdot?

Postmaster General Charles Emory Smith thought the same thing in 1900, and in fact, by 1916 there were 112 miles of tubes in place in Boston, Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and Philadelphia:
http://future.newsday.com/1/fbak0115.htm

Of course, he didn't take into account the $17,000 per mile per year cost for the system. Ouch.

Paris, on the other hand, had a fairly successful attempt (only given up in 1983):
http://www.ftech.net/ ~winlink/jdhayhurst/pneumatic/book1.html

There seem to be a fair number of people who think that Fax machines are sending the actual document across the phone lines...somehow. More than once in my days as a Kinko employee I came across people who were amazed I could fax their document and give the original back to them.

Schreiber High School is a Public HS, its the only HS in the Port Washington School district. Since I live on Long Island also, one of our local newspapers, newsday has an article about this as well, reach it here. It also includes information on two other finalists, who are both from Long Island as well.

I still read a newspaper every day, and I don't plan to stop. Partially because it makes my commute seem shorter (and if you ride the LIRR, you know how valuable *that* is), but mostly because Newsday is still my best source for entertaining and informative stories about my beloved Mets. ESPN.com and CNNSI.com don't come close to the local flavor sports fans need. Yeah, Newsday sucks for technology, and they're only OK for news (which, as Katz said, I already read on line the day before), but there's nothing better for my daily baseball fix.

For a group of people who pride themselves on being knowledgeable about many things, and fair about most, this sort of reasoning defies logic. Appearently you do not pay attention to the world outside your immediate surroundings.

If there was racial equality or sexual equality in America then roughly 13% of Fortune 500 CEO's would be black, over 50% would be women, and over 12% would be Hispanic. This assumes that you believe race and sex do not equal natural ability. The Fortune 500 got it's first black CEO last year. You could probably count the number of women on your fingers.

Poverty rates among blacks and hispanics are still disproportionate to whites, 1/4 of all black males in the US are felons and no longer have the right to vote.

Unless you are a racist or blinded by your insulated lifestyle, you cannot ignore that affermative action, government programs to help the poor, and special education programs for minorities and women are not needed today.

I personally think that we geeks are not racist or sexist at heart and are often idealistic and tend to not believe something non-scientific until we see or experience it firsthand. Just because whites don't openly harass blacks on the street everyday, and just because we've got some legislation, doesn't mean the problems gone away.

It's sad that we're still fighting this inequality in America almost 40 years after the Civil Rights Movement won it's major victories. I personally think America has gone from hating minorities to hating the poor. If you think these problems are to complex or to expensive to fix, there are more people willing to sacrifice their lives to promote peace and unity than there are geeks to write open source. If you want to know where the resources are to help these people, read this