Slashdot Mirror

From here:

"Instead of blowing up major landmarks and killing thousands of people at a time, Al Qaeda reportedly has a new target: You!

Their new concept involves killing individual Americans at random, door-to-door, in our own homes and in public.

Chilling new training videos and other materials obtained by U.S. intelligence indicate that Osama Bin Laden's henchmen believe the new strategy will paralyze Americans everywhere with fear."

Considering the source, I don't believe in it; but the similarity with the Washington sniper is conspicuous. Sorry for posting it here, I just thought it was an idea; am I offtopic or am I offtopic?

honestly, can someone please explain the difference between /. and a $0.50 supermarket tabloid?

Sure. The tabloid has better pictures! :)

Over at the Weekly World News, there's a shocking space movie of an altogether different kind

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - A family got the shock of their lives when lightning zapped their satellite dish and the TV turned from nice to nasty -- with XXX extraterrestrial porno flicks!

"We were watching Touched by an Angel with the children when -- kaboom! -- there was a frightful thunderclap," said 31-year-old wife and mother of two, Sheila McCallum.

"The lights flickered for a moment and the TV went blank. When it came back on, we saw a beastly new show that looked like an X-rated alien movie."

The McCallums sat watching in mute horror and disbelief for nearly five minutes trying to decipher the bizarre pornographic images and sounds filling their family room. When they finally realized what they were being subjected to, Sheila took the children, Evan, 8, and Angela, 6, from the room while Angus worked the remote in a fruitless effort to change the channel.

...and so on

In a related story

Lead singer of The Phlegm Puppies has a list of 19,000 people who downloaded his songs and is going to sue each one

That lead singer is a diabolical moron.

*shrug* - so what - I hardly read slashdot anymore, because stories tend to have a niveau targetted at 14 year old male computer nerds who are busy fighting puberty. This article is marks a new low. If it goes on like this I'll probably better switch over to WWN.

Of course, when I read this headline I immediately thought of our pint-sized West Virginian friend.

Does anyone else have any other links to confirm or (more likely) deny this?
They're kinda like the Weekly World News of technology. You know, the people who brought us BatBoy?

The difference is that real journalists attribute everything. Since the editor at the Chinese newspaper wasn't aware of the Onion, etc. it appears this freelance writer simply plagarized the entire story. Slashdot does not plagarize stories because it ONLY references other published articles with the exception of Jonathan Katz's work, which very well could be plagarizing pieces appearing in the Weekly World News. I'd strongly suspect this writer won't be working with that newspaper again.

Americans want to know what is going on in the world! They just don't know where to find it, since the main stream media is always covering up stories and not letting us know the truth!

Also, most government intelligence has to go through and review, briefing, debriefing, etc. before it can be used

I'd be upset if the government didn't watch the news, of course, but I'd be equally upset if they didn't also use their own sources, and yes, review the data before acting on it. Reporters have been fooled too.

Now that you've told me i can get it for free, why would i want to pay for it? That's like paying for /. batboy wouldn't like that!

Anyone with two cells in their brain know why that language is in there. Auto-Update is on by default in XP, which was designed before 9-11 and MS's newfound "commitment to security," which may actually prove to be sincere.

This language is not meant to give MS the right to check serial numbers, or to the ability to tear apart corporate lans. It's there to protect MS from idiots who don't know enough to turn off auto-update, which is easily done by anyone with a clue.

The linked article is remarkably similar in tone and logic to the well-known tabloid troll Ed Anger, only the target of wrath is M$ instead of the Unamerican.

Readers of the finest news source in america have known this all along...

and i thought this was just bad trashy journalism.

so... when does slashdot get a bat boy story icon?

Nutty post office plan to put serial killers on stamps!

The page 5 girl I trust, no one else. Okay, and batboy's girlfriend. She's been through so much.

Unfortunately, too many people start to believe what they read just because it's in black and white. That is why Kubrick stopped filming in black and white after Dr. Strangelove. Never again did he film in anything but Technicolor, which adds layers and layers of complexity to his films.

UFOs are real, and Kubrick knew it. They are slip-streaming from exactly 1521 years in the future (1521 being the biblical number of the Oracle Beast) to both aid and destroy us. Kubrick discovered this in his research and was nearly killed by Clarke, who helped mastermind the conspiracy.

Don't believe me? Check out these facts. Haven't you ever used a spork? When you come to your senses, join the truth-seekers at MUFON.

That's what I did. I was really hoping that the Census people would dispute it so that I could sell the story to the Weekly World News (US Government Discovers SPACE ALIEN Living In America!!).
/.

Age depictions: Paul is supposed to be 15. He looks a tad over 20 to me... but then again, maybe people age differently in the future. Mohaim looked a tad younger than I would have expected as well.

Character: Guildsman looked like a cross between one of the creatures from "The Abyss" and BatBoy.

Weaponry: The crysknives (if that's what they really were) look like polished metal, rather than "a milky white substance...".

The Litany: They recited the "litany against fear" incorrectly.

Yes, I understand. I may be overly-critical of this, but I just got a little disturbed with how many things I thought were just plain wrong in this (first part of the) miniseries. It just shocked me that this was supposed to be 6 hours long and it turns out that parts are missing from this that were included in the first movie (referring to the escape of Paul and Jessica as well as the slightly better character development of Dr. Yueh... he at least had more than 7 lines in the first movie!)

All-in-all, I think that this has been (so-far) a decent miniseries... but that's because I read the book(s) first. And we all know that to completely enjoy a movie and not have to sit through watching it nit-picking every little detail that the director interpreted in his own way, we should NOT read the book first. (Jurasic Park, Sphere, The Hobbit, Interview With a Vampire, Battlefield Earth (HA! Not that it was a good read in the first place)... need I go on?)

Even the respected peer-reviewed Weekly World News reports that robots will WIPE OUT MANKIND.

Even the respected peer-reviewed Weekly World News reports that robots will WIPE OUT MANKIND.

I always figured that the hardcore geek news was found on ArsTechnica and that all of the stuff that made me rub my hands together in glee was on Slashdot, be it technical or tabloid crap.

I wrote in "Human". I was so hoping that the Census people would insist on some other answer, so I could sell the story to the Weekly World News ("Census Discovers Space Alien Living In U.S.!!")
/.

The report seems to be that this thing is eating more than a teenage BH should be. But given the way they eat (everything from light on down) wouldn't this just mean that it ran across a particularly dense "meal"?

And because it's fairly fundamental to my Theory of Everything, do BHs grow as they eat?

oh, and Space.com lost about forty points on my credibility scale with this link under the story

"Aliens Among Us -- Which celebrity is really an alien? You decide! "

They trying to muscle in on the Weekly World News?
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You may not like Microsoft, but Windows 2000 is a very capable operating system. The fastest databases in the world run on w2k. Sure, FreeBSD might be even faster at certain things, and being free is a big win, but this doesn't mean that w2k sucks. Heck, even Lycos is switching to it.

Slashdot has become the Weekly World News of tech sites. What a pot of crap.

Isn't the Weekly World that actually uses real news stories from other sources, publishes doctored photos, and incites rumormongering, all without fact checking? I think that would be a better analogy, if only slapdash had a page 5 girl.

Oh my God, it's Ed Anger posting on slashdot!

While I can appreciate Jon's frustration about Pinkerton's apathy toward the points he raised, I have to say I'm not even slightly suprised that this was what happened. A sad fact of modern corporate culture is that they need to be ruthless in order to prosper - if the majority of companies are ruthless then their competitors also have to be ruthless to compete. And this is what breeds the amoral attitude that corporations have. They are required to make money for their shareholders, and this requires them to go for anything which can make money legally.

No, the real issue here is education. In recent years we have seen the culture of hysteria grow from the Weekly World News to encompass practically all mainstream media. People often aren't educated enough, or educated wrongly, and as such don't possess the necessary scepticism to see that the media is always biased towards getting a good story, whether it bears any relation to the real issues or not.

The trouble is, once the hysteria has set in it is almost impossible to stop. Rational arguments and facts have little impact, especially in a society where most of the populace lack the education to understand or apply them. The government, or whichever body is appropriate to the hysteria, is then forced to give in to this hysteria, since if they are up for election they require public support. This is probably one of the major failings of democracy, but the only real way around it is to have a well-educated populace who can consider issues rather than being force-fed opinions from the media.

Will this ever happen? Not for a long time in my opinion. Education is a slow process, and changes in society seem to be running ahead of people's ability to encompass and adapt to them. That's what we really need - the ability to adapt to new circumstances without holding back or fearing the future.

With their recent story on demons that possess hard drives, ghosts who frequent chat rooms, government trained monkeys on AOL, and even anexpose on bank privacy abuses on the internet, the Weekly World News is fast becoming the definitive resource for IT professionals everywhere.

Their timely reporting has already saved some people's souls, now it is saving people's lives. Could it be the next /. ?

With their recent story on demons that possess hard drives, ghosts who frequent chat rooms, government trained monkeys on AOL, and even anexpose on bank privacy abuses on the internet, the Weekly World News is fast becoming the definitive resource for IT professionals everywhere.

Their timely reporting has already saved some people's souls, now it is saving people's lives. Could it be the next /. ?

With their recent story on demons that possess hard drives, ghosts who frequent chat rooms, government trained monkeys on AOL, and even anexpose on bank privacy abuses on the internet, the Weekly World News is fast becoming the definitive resource for IT professionals everywhere.

Their timely reporting has already saved some people's souls, now it is saving people's lives. Could it be the next /. ?

The Bat Boy is on the loose! According to the article, people in Wheeling, WV. are in deep doo doo.

"And worse, this e-mail bomb program will eventually find its way into the hands of anyone who wants it."

And not 3 lines below is a link to E-Mail Story To A Friend ! HAhaha

Well, this is nothing compared to what they digged out on Lee Harvey Oswald.

Erm... 5-7-5... that looks about right to me :-)

Does it bother anyone else that this story is right to an account of a kidnapping perpetrated by a "real-life Zombie"?
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Even people who are familiar with how computers work have trouble getting their minds around the terrible things that can be done.

Like blowing people up - gee, that was hard to wrap my head around :-)

Come within two digits of cracking an 87-digit Russian security code that would have sent deadly missiles hurtling toward five of America's major cities.

Of course, the WeeklyWorldNews's mole in the KGB got us this exclusive scoop

"That means anyone who has a quarrel with you, holds a grudge against you or just plain doesn't like your looks, can kill you and never be found out."

So be careful next time you're in an online chat forum, the next script kiddy you piss off isn't just going to Ping of Death your machine, they're going to blow you up !!

Their page 5 girl is into "wake-boarding and -- what else? -- shopping." - what a women. Nice to see that tabloid journalism is alive and strong in the internet age. In other news from the site, YOUR WIFE IS PROBABLY A BITCH, EXPERT SAYS!.

tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose

A new study from this week's New Slashdot Science reveals that not only are trolls inescapable in /. message boards, but that they are actually woven into the "fabric" of slashdot itself, due to unpredictable interactions of certain aspects of the source code.

It is believed that this theory could answer many of the questions of current /. users. Such questions as:

1. Why are there so many useless, garbage posts?
2. Why do people persist in clogging the discussions with pure crap?

These questions become irrelevant and easily answered once it is realized that this sort of behavior is innate to slashdot and cannot be stopped. See newscientist.com for more information on this and other incredible scientific developments. Additionally please see Weekly World News for additional updates.

Since Jobs took over, Apple has been running a very tight ship - no leaks. Hence, rumor sites have had no reliable source of information, and read more like the Weekly World News, where everything is made up. Don't believe it.

I'll just say that the organic-material-exchange-scenario is possible and completely feasible.

Fine. But is it scientific? What would occam's razor say? Yeah, it's reasonable that life originated on another planet (it seems really premature to suggest Mars), but isn't it more reasonable to suggest that it originated on Earth? Or that it has originated several times, on several planets, and occasionally been transported from one to another?

It's too early to rule out any of these scenarios (IMHO). Sensational headlines like "Scientists say life originated on Mars!!!" are more suited to publications like the Weekly World News than to scientific journals or even Wired, but that's where the tabloids get their material. Their writers skim the journals, find some poor sucker of a scientist, take his/her words out of context, and print an attention-grabbing headline and article. The underlying science may be good, but the spin that the tabloids (and sometimes the mainstream press) puts on it is far from scientific. Magazines get sold, and scientists get laughed at by their colleagues. If they're lucky they might save their careers. Oh well...

Seriously though, I think if they work out a cheap way to send people and get them back and start working on colonisation of Mars, that way we won't have to worry about screwing up this planet anymore as we will have another to escape to. :)

Seriously though, I think if they work out a cheap way to send people and get them back and start working on colonisation of Mars, that way we won't have to worry about screwing up this planet anymore as we will have another to escape to. :)

If I were a young lady, I would be more concerned with how to keep away this guy, also the subject of an article at the Weekly World News.

Wait a second... big floppy ears... I wonder if he wants to play computers with me!

I loved this story. Let me just say that I have been a proud WWN reader for a couple of months now, and highly recommend it to anyone who likes The Onion. WWN is not so obviously a satirical publication, as the onion, but it is lampooning itself constantly. Every issue, I'm afraid that the cover story will be "WWN Staff admits WWN is a hoax. Longest running joke in America finally comes clean. Noted Experts baffled." For the uninitiated, read Dear Dotti and Ed Anger. You wont be disappointed.

Foofboy.
Noted Expert.

I loved this story. Let me just say that I have been a proud WWN reader for a couple of months now, and highly recommend it to anyone who likes The Onion. WWN is not so obviously a satirical publication, as the onion, but it is lampooning itself constantly. Every issue, I'm afraid that the cover story will be "WWN Staff admits WWN is a hoax. Longest running joke in America finally comes clean. Noted Experts baffled." For the uninitiated, read Dear Dotti and Ed Anger. You wont be disappointed.

Foofboy.
Noted Expert.