Slashdot Mirror

dstone writes "Craig Venter, Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2000 has a new hobby: collecting rich people's DNA. Millionaires are lining up to buy their personal gene maps for the cool price of USD$621,500. The process takes a week and you get some insight into your genetic mutations that may correlate with illnesses, cancers, Alzeimer's, etc. Venter is a high profile character in the genetic sequencing scene and the Human Genome Project. More info on him may be found here(1) , here(2), and here(3) . If you had the pocket change, would you give this man your business?"

smoondog writes "The Matrix Reloaded is the highly anticipated sequel to Wachowski's geek epic. Time.com has opened a new preview site with pics and interviews. Make sure you check out the pics on The Matrix homepage. Too bad 2003 is so far away...."

usermilk writes "The upcoming issue of Time magazine has an article on 'How to Hack an iPod.' It teaches you how to convert your iPod into a semi-PDA. As the article says, 'Owners of Apple's MP3 player opened it up and added all sorts of bells and whistles. You can too.'"

SkywalkerOS8 writes: "Vonage has begun offering Voice-over-IP(VoIP) service to residential broadband users. I've had the service since Friday and the quality is indistinguishable from a regular phone line. It's only $20/month for 500 minutes or $40/month for unlimited service. They include Cisco equipment, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Caller ID and Voicemail (which you can check online) in the service price. You can read more about it in this article in Time. It works fine through my Linux NAT firewall/router and my monthly phone budget has now dropped from $60+ to $20."

Artifice_Eternity writes: "Time magazine is running a story highlighting the US government's neglect of open source intelligence, or OSINT. OSINT includes stuff on the Internet and in various newspapers and periodicals, as well as "gray literature" (limited-availability publications like dissertations, local phone directories, etc.). It also includes foreign-language experts, and commercial data (satellite maps, news archives, scientific research). The mass of data to be crunched indicates how intelligence is an information processing problem in today's world."

binarydreams writes "Time has a pretty decent article on the capturing and trading of television shows on the Internet. The author gives a very good description of the capturing process, the people who enjoy the results, the future of PVR (focusing on the Replay 4000) and why the TV and movie industries are scared." This is just more of the TV industry coming to grips with what happened to the music industry. But it's important that the mainstream learns about it.

binarydreams writes "Time has a pretty decent article on the capturing and trading of television shows on the Internet. The author gives a very good description of the capturing process, the people who enjoy the results, the future of PVR (focusing on the Replay 4000) and why the TV and movie industries are scared." This is just more of the TV industry coming to grips with what happened to the music industry. But it's important that the mainstream learns about it.

XorNand writes: "Time is reporting that the Dept of Transportation, acting on instructions from Congress, is in the process of linking together states' drivers' license databases. They figure that it'll be cheaper and easier to slip under the radar of civil libertarians and privacy watchdogs. Wonder if Larry is a bit peeved that he's not getting his cut?"

Dave (picked at random) and 8000 other slashdot readers wrote in to tell us that they too had been overcome by the relentless hype machine that is IT, Ginger, Segway, whatever. Read about IT in your favorite hype-dispensing media outlet, each of which thinks that it has an exclusive on the story of IT. Flash diagram of IT. Time. NY Times. Reuters. And don't forget to watch the advertisement, errr, "demonstration" of IT on Good Morning Consumers tomorrow. Update: 12/03 13:37 GMT by T : Segway's webmaster John Grohol points out the segway website as well.

Dave (picked at random) and 8000 other slashdot readers wrote in to tell us that they too had been overcome by the relentless hype machine that is IT, Ginger, Segway, whatever. Read about IT in your favorite hype-dispensing media outlet, each of which thinks that it has an exclusive on the story of IT. Flash diagram of IT. Time. NY Times. Reuters. And don't forget to watch the advertisement, errr, "demonstration" of IT on Good Morning Consumers tomorrow. Update: 12/03 13:37 GMT by T : Segway's webmaster John Grohol points out the segway website as well.

oo7tushar writes: "Time has a list of the Inventions of 2001. They've got a list of some very impressive inventions. They've got the inventions, a short description, prices/costs, and a link to the websites. On the list is the Abiocor Artificial Heart, Millennium Bridge, EZ-Rocket, a very sweet light weight fuel-cell bike with good mileage and a whole bunch of other very high tech toys, gadgets, vehicles, robots, and medical technology. A good read and very interesting."

oo7tushar writes: "Time has a list of the Inventions of 2001. They've got a list of some very impressive inventions. They've got the inventions, a short description, prices/costs, and a link to the websites. On the list is the Abiocor Artificial Heart, Millennium Bridge, EZ-Rocket, a very sweet light weight fuel-cell bike with good mileage and a whole bunch of other very high tech toys, gadgets, vehicles, robots, and medical technology. A good read and very interesting."

Current WTC happenings: The FBI is searching ISPs with FISA warrants. Architects and civil engineers are starting to speculate on why the towers collapsed. Pictures: NASA, a powerful photoessay, newspaper headlines. Current investigation news: LA Times, NY Times, CNN. They're finally starting to mention casualty figures. Finally, bjb writes: "It isn't the hollywood blockbuster of a story, but I'm a daily reader of Slashdot, and I was on the 38th floor of the WTC 1 building when the first plane hit. Oh, and I was reading Slashdot at the time. You can read about my experience here. It was originally an email that I sent out to friends and family, but I was asked by NPR's Talk of the Nation to make it a web page."

marvin tph writes "The results are in: Time.com is the first mainstream news source to write an intelligent article on story Code Red. With all the big guys telling people that we've only seen the eye of the storm its nice to see someone get it right."

marvin tph writes "The results are in: Time.com is the first mainstream news source to write an intelligent article on story Code Red. With all the big guys telling people that we've only seen the eye of the storm its nice to see someone get it right."

elph writes: "Seems like some kids in Korea have been taking an online role playing game, Lineage: Blood Pledge a little too seriously ... You can check out the CNN.com article here. Ban the RPGs! They cause kids to kill eachother! Evil! Satan!" The article paints Korean society with a fairly broad brush, but the numbers are still astonishing -- imagine if 5% of all Americans all played the same online game, for instance.

Sachin Karol links to this Time Asia report about the Simputer. A snippet from the article: "It's not a PC, but rather a microcomputer, a "Simple Inexpensive Mobile Computer." In short, a Simputer. It's the latest attempt to reach a kind of techno-humanist grail: a computer priced and designed for the billions of people who have yet to set foot in the wired wards of the Global Village. A computer, say its creators, for the masses." (Read more.)

A week ago, the prototype Simputer was successfully demonstrated at Bangalore's National Institute of Advanced Science. Here are some pictures from an earlier demonstration of Simputer prototypes; there is a section on the Simputer site which is supposed to show details about the architecture, but which promises more information by September of last year; there is information about the guts of the machine in the FAQ, though.

Sounds like a potentially useful tool, but how much impact do you think such a computer could have on the other problems faced by rural Indians? How much of the balance can be swung by such a device?

doomy writes "A pretty stunning story hit Associated Press's wire today. Apparently Jeff "king of cybercommerce" Bezos of Amazon.com fame would be named the Time Magazines's person of the year. The same wire states that Amazon was loosing millions of dollars while this award was given." I've stopped shopping at Amazon personally. Until they drop their lame patent stuff, I figure they don't want my business.