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It's obvious that Seanbaby.com is funny, weird and distinctive, a showcase example of how idiosyncratic personalities, viewpoints and sub-cultures can flourish on a free, non-corporatized Internet. It's not as clear why Seanbaby is important, a vital but endangered Web species that needs to grow and prosper in a world whose desktop is being shaped by Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner.

If there's a single trait most people who read Slashdot share -- maybe the only one besides an addiction to software -- it's a love of popular culture.

Culture has become a huge term, expanding by the week. It has come to include superhero comics, trashy daytime TV, sci-fi TV shows and websites, indie rock, rap and hip-hop, gaming, anime, cartoons, whatever. High culture -- the traditional, respectable, well-funded kind -- gets covered and criticized in the other media. But upstart culture, especially low cyberculture, can be wondrous stuff, an explosition of idiosyncratic voices that gives birth to this website and to Seanbaby.com. Interesting, valuable, fragile and endangered, Seanbaby.com is in its unique way, very significant.

In fact, for those working to maintain their sanity in the Disney/Sony/ AOL/Microsoft nation forming off and around the Web, The Seanbaby News Stupid Probe is a great place to start the day.

You won't get the world as presented by the Today Show there. Instead, you'll encounter what the site itself describes as news that will "kick your head's ass," focusing on frivolous lawsuits, exploding animals, chainsaws and chickenheads. You won't want to miss the Stupid Forum either. This is a look into the soul of the real America, at least a significant chunk of it.

Seanbaby is direct, if nothing else -- most media is not. It describes itself as intended for people over 18 -- only because, as we all know, kids will shoot one another if they hear or see dirty words. Seriously Seanbaby.com is what the late, lamented Suck really wanted to be but couldn't quite pull off. From the 20 worst NES games to Superhero Bios featuring stories, comics and videos about Aquaman, Lex Luthor and all their stupid friends, this site bristles with 'tude, shared cultural references, biting, anti-hypocritical humor. It rakes the moral pompousity that passes for discussion of digital and other culture in Washington, on campus and in much of the other press. It also manages to capture a lot of the lunacy.

The site's links and forms veer off in some strange directions, but Seanbaby.com is a great antidote to news, culture and the corporate entertainment machine as presented in the Corporate Republic.

Seanbaby is one of the reasons the Web's still-vibrant climate of individualistic expression needs to be preserved as Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner gather their forces like two giant and rapacious dinosaurs to plot out the future of the desktop. (Believe me, if either or both win, Seanbaby.com won't be there.) Seanbaby.com is the voice of the other Web, the "real" web, if you prefer. It understands that comics, The Simpsons, and Nintendo aren't just "entertainment" -- they're the basis of whole sub-cultures affecting and shaping people's lives. It suggests the promise of the medium to create original and outspoken content and link people with distinctive sensibilities, two things the AOL culture relentlessly destroys, no matter what it owns, buys or acquires (AOL/Time-Warner is now trashing up the snoozy CNN news network by adding -- what else? -- lifestyle, celebrity gossip, and health stories -- and by hiring the usual platoons of blow-dried airheads. That won't get younger viewers either. The money they're wasting could launch tens of thousands of Seanbabies).

"You should know that some pussies have been known to find sarcasm and bad words confusing and offensive," writes Seanbaby, whose bio also appears on the site. "If so, I, your sexual fantasy from the future, advise you to find a new source of free comedy, caveman. For those who stayed at the risk of face rockage, you should know that soon, like all Earth entertainment, this site will be replaced by Doctor Excitement's Fun Blaster, a peace-bringing combination midget generator and launcher."

Old fart media execs wondering what they have to do to get young people to consume mainstream media have only to log onto Seanbaby.com to understand why they never will, and don't really even want to. This freedom and voice and community and definition of culture will never enter a straight newspaper, pop up on a network newscast or, for that matter, appear on Slate or Salon. Yet it reflects its new culture as well as the New Yorker Magazine mirrors the old. For as long as it lasts in this parlous time of Web sanitation, may it grow and prosper, and spawn a thousand more just like it.

I know a bit about geeky 15-year-olds; I've written a book and a number of articles about them. I get a couple of hundred e-mails from them daily. They have time, energy and particular physical and mental skills for gaming, developing software and navigating the Net. They are smart, creative, and know the inner workings of the the Net and the Web better than any other sub-set of the species. They do, in fact, have access to unprecedented amounts of information. Few parents, teachers, pols or reporters have any clear idea what these kids are doing online, or just how significant cultures like gaming and coding have become. Note: second in a series -- you can also read the first .

Small wonder the kids believe that older people have little or nothing to teach or tell them. It's often seemed true. The Net fosters a "Hey, I can do this, too" value system.

Sometimes, the outsiders, younger than most successful business executives, score big -- with successes like Netscape, Gnutella, Linux, IM, WinAmp. Even though they're more than 15, Lewis would argue that such pioneers help drive the status revolution. But they're exceptions, too.

Look at the allegedly-overturned powerful institutions and their upstart rivals. The music industry is in less trouble than Napster. Microsoft still makes far more money than Open Source systems. The broadcast network's audience steadily erodes, but their evening news shows still have greater reach and clout than Matt Drudge.

The strengths of 15-year-olds are also their weaknesses. Certain traits of the Net-connected 15-year old form recognizable patterns. They tend to confuse hostility with communication; they shoot (or type) before they think. They can be arrogant and posturing as well as creative and energetic. They are sometimes narcissistic: they fixate on "me" media, blocking and filtering people and ideas they don't like or agree with. Too often, they see reality only as what they (or the people on their mailing lists, blogs or p2p forums) think.

Although they consider themselves ferocious defenders of free speech, in theory, in practice many find differing opinions infuriating. Online, they have not grown up in a civil culture. Often, their hostility is a posture, a veneer.

They have profound, impressive grounding in technology, gaming and software, but big blank spots in many other areas of knowledge, including history, politics, mainstream culture -- fields not necessary to navigating online but definitely helpful in running the world.

No question they're among the leaders of the technological revolution spawned in cyberspace. But they are also kids, unprepared for the political, civic, ethical and headaches of leadership, or the responsibility that comes with running institutions. The first generation of computer kids is now running the tech world, and they've been universally sobered by the realities of economics and politics.

Does childhood end when computers come into their lives, as Jonathan Lebed's father laments in "Next"? I suspect there's some truth to the idea that things can get lost and values skewed when any single value system or interest -- computing, sports, music -- overwhelms a person's days and nights and crowds out everything else. The computer geeks and nerds I know seem healthiest to me when other powerful things in their lives help keep them grounded: close relationships with friends and parents, religion, a passion for chess, dogs, hiking ... whatever.

Despite the widening cultural gap, I still think older people have some things to teach them. One of the surreal things about being a kid, of course, is that you have no idea what you don't know or might need. Life's lessons and experiences, along with history, ethics and context, can be invaluable, and they're hard for 15-year-olds to come by on their own. The reality isn't so much that kids are taking over the world, but that the world has sometimes made them technological orphans, abandoned them to sophisticated machinery that few adults bother to comprehend.

Margaret Mead wrote years ago that the pace of cultural change in the West was accelerating so rapidly that the young were coming to believe they had nothing to learn from their elders. And that was before the Net. Her prediction has been fulfilled, more than even she imagined.

(Next -- Your feedback.)

Barbarian writes: "CNN reports that a Russian Submarine has launched a rocket containing a solar sail payload sucessfully. The mission is a 30 minute sub-orbital test. space.com has more details on the craft." Our earlier story. Another submitter noted that today is the 25th anniversary of the landing of the Viking 1 Mars probe. JPL has a Mars site, which is not responding as I write this. Maybe the Martians got to it. :)

HobbySpacer writes: "Japan's ISAS (Institute for Space and Aeronautical Science) is testing a sub-orbital rocketship called the Reusable Rocket Vehicle Test (RVT). A video of a recent test flight is available. (Alternate source.) According to Space News, the vertical-takeoff-vertical-landing vehicle was built on an annual budget of $400k and assisted by volunteers from the Japan Rocket Society. The highest flight so far is 25m but the priority is technology development and low-cost operations, i.e. learning to run a rocket vehicle like a jet. Gradually, the flight envelope will be expanded and later more powerful engines and lighter components will be tested." Low budgets, encouraging volunteer participants -- now that's the way to run a space program!

"Like the DC-X project, the approach is a throwback to the successful X projects of the 1950s when great progress was made by progressing in small steps with small dedicated teams and modest budgets. (As with the X-15, at least 2 or 3 vehicles should be built because if you don't lose at least one during testing, you aren't pushing hard enough.) Perhaps the U.S. will return to this approach, as well, since the mega, 10 bleeding edge technologies at once, all or nothing approach of the X-33 failed miserably."

mindpixel writes: "unisci is reporting research from Georga Tech that suggest the the key motor protein ATP works by 'rectified browian motion' as a kind of thermally driven nano-ratchet. The researchers said "We're arguing that Brown really had discovered the secret of life ... When you get into this sub-cellular level on the nanometer scale, the dynamics and vitality of protein molecules is really due to thermal motion." The implications for nanotech are obvious."

rst2003 asks: "Is it possible (in theory) to do sub-pixel rendering (e.g. cleartype) on a CRT monitor using a triangular dot matrix instead of a 1x3-aspect rectangular one? If so, has it been done? I'm fairly sure it's not been done by Microsoft or Adobe, but is it available on X?"

Red Mercury writes: "Sony has just announced their much anticipated high resolution (320x320) Palm OS-based PEG-N710 Clie Handheld. You can read their press release, and check out Red Mercury's experience with a pre-production unit here." And if you'd like to do more than look, lazylion says: "While everyone was busy yesterday oggling Apple's new low cost sub-notebook, Sony quietly began accepting pre-orders for the US English version of their fabulous Palm-alike, the Clie PEG-N700c. This is the one with the jog dial, MP3 player, memory stick & 320 x 320 px display. Cool! They even match. I'll take one of each!"

Gary writes "You can also learn more about How Solar Sails work. In mid-April 2001, The Planetary Society, in collaboration with several Russian space organizations, will test launch the deployment mechanism for the first solar-sail mission, Cosmos-1, in a sub-orbital flight. It is a rounded solar sail that is divided into eight triangular blades with inflatable booms for support. Maneuvering a solar-sail spacecraft requires balancing two factors: the direction of the solar sail relative to the sun and the orbital speed of the spacecraft."

Arthur Rabatin writes "We are software developers in London, UK, and get most of our internet related business through advertising agencies and design agencies. The standard arrangements are that the agency is _our_ client (contractual counterpart) and they deliver our software to the client/end-user. Although we typically know and talk to the end-client [the agency's client], we have no contract with them directly." Read on for why this leads to problems, and a plea for help in clearing them up.

"Our problem is that more often than not, projects get delayed because the design company can't agree with [their] client on the visual aspect of the site; although the functionality is often better defined (we write detailed specs), because the project is held up, the [end] client does not pay the design agency and hence we don't get paid -- often not for months. This despite we (a) are not able to deliver only because we do not get the HTML stuff from [our] client to actually put it up or (b) we do actually finish the software but end-clients refuse to sign off because 'the site' is not finished.

How do fellow programmers in similar position handle such a situation? What would be the best way to structure a contract so that we can't be denied our (IMO) fair deal? To some extent shall we accept our client's (the design agency) 'difficulty' they have with the actual client? How do you deal with situations that you need clients [of our clients] to sign off specs but the design agency just delays things because they don't understand it and think the colour of their submit buttons is more important than the software behind it?

As we all know, even if one has every legal right to do so, one can't just sue every client ( ... that's an idea :-), but we are at a point where we are putting our own business at risk.

Please help!"

Phew! -- I hope I've corrected followed which "client" is which with my brackets above. Does anyone have good advice when it comes to this kind of multi-tiered I'm-not-responsible business dealing?

Saving Silverman is the newest Dumb Buddy movie targeted squarely at the people who see more movies than any other demographic sub-set: adolescent boys. Borrowing heavily from the ground-breaking spirit of Wayne's World (every third word is "dude") and other teen and young adult sexual-coming-of-age grossout pictures, it's bountifully stupid, but does have things to recommend it. Interesting how these movies vary wildly in quality. Unless you're into this genre, you can safely skip it. Spoilage alert: plot is discussed, but believe me, it doesn't matter. Talk about the genre and post your own reviews.

Ever since Hollywood discovered that teens and young adults were the nation's prime moviegoers, writes and directors have aimed at them squarely. The trend goes as far back as the Frankie-and-Annette beach movies. We've seen the prominent John Hughes flick's of the 80's -- Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club -- and more recently -- the much-superior Farrelly Brothers offerings. There were some good moments in Cruel Intentions and Election. The Naked Gun and Police Academy movies were sometimes hilarious, especially the first few.

There are classics (of the form) like Clueless and American Pie, and the occasional success aimed at both teens and young adults, like Something About Mary. The Scream trilogy was creepy, culturally self-aware and unswervingly satirical.

But quality varies: Save The Last Dance, a huge box -office hit, takes an awfully saccharine look at interracial dating, but manages to be mildly interesting. The semen-in-the-hair-scene in Something About Mary elevated gross to an art form, setting a standard it's hard to top.

Sugar and Spice, on the other hand, a clumsy effort at a cheerleader spoof released a couple of weeks ago, was simply pitiful and inane.

A hallmark of teen movies, especially guy ones, is that because it's the much-abused nerds who grow up to become filmmakers, those who are straight, conservative, attractve or popular get raked mercilessly and continuously.

One of the more successful teen subgenres is the "Dumb Buddy" movie epitomized in the modern era by Wayne's World, Animal House, and of course, the legendary late great TV series Beavis & Butthead, one of the bitterest attacks ever on the primary traits of male adolescence and on authority in general. Their unique spirits live on all over the Web.

Like them, Saving Silverman is profoundly stupid and pointless. A requirement of the Dumb Buddy movie is that it be offensive, generally via obligatory toilet jokes and gross-out scenes. Stars Jason Biggs, Steve Zahn, and Jack Black (who was apparently born funny, but isn't at his best here), are all eminently likeable, their unflappable good humor and haplessness pulling the story along, and the movie has four or five truly funny moments -- especially when the three perform together in their Neil Diamond tribute band. Diamond, a good sport in this movie, pops up several times and subjects himself to good-natured ridicule in ways most pop celebrities wouldn't.

In some ways, these guys are the friends we all wish we'd had. In other ways, we're relieved we don't. Biggs plays his usual role -- the decent, bumbling, horny guy (Darren Silverman this time) pining for somebody to love. Helped along by his doofy, hapless pals -- Wayne (Zahn) is a pest control worker, while J.D. (Black) can't keep a job at a Subway franchise -- Silverman finds his special someone in Judith (Amanda Peet).

Bad choice. Judith is a bitchy, controlling psychologist who sees Silverman as her puppet, herself the "puppet-master." Even worse, she reads books. "Don't make me be taking away your masturbating privileges," Judith warns Darren at one point when he dares to defy her.

The first thing she does is forbid Silverman to see his buddies on pain of losing all sexual privileges. This doesn't sit well with Wayne and J.D., who resent her manipulation of Silverman, her nasty treatment of them, and want to reunite him with his first and true love Sandy (Amanda Detmer), who is about to enter a convent. So the band decides to kidnap Judith, though she's a martial arts whiz. You can already foresee some of the sight-gag possibilities. here. The movie is strange, because it frequently turns mean-spirited. No matter how you play it, kidnapping and running people over just isn't that funny. And unless you're 12, the butt-implant operation will make you upchuck your Twizzlers.

One thing the Dumb Male Buddy movies show is that humor varies wildly, according to age and gender. Critics and adults will shriek (and not with laughter) at some of the stuff in this movie, but if you watch the kids in the theater, they will definitely be laughing. Humor hits people differently, something snooty and self-righteous critics of movies ought to keep in mind.

The movie makes no sense, of course. Silverman is the last guy on earth that a girl like Judith would spend five seconds with, and even the most loyal pals wouldn't go to the insane lengths Wayne and J.D do to keep them from hooking up. But Dumb Buddy movies are allowed to suspend the rules of reality. You're not going for coherence or realism, are you?

Dumb buddy movies exist to deal with scatological humor, adolescent security insecurity, jokes about who's gay, who's got the most testosterone, glimpses of breasts, other sexual sub-themes. Saving Silverman runs true to form, but on the low end of the spectrum.

The funny thing is, teen movies ought to be completely boring and annoying, but somehow, they aren't. Critics trash them, serious filmmakers shun them, intellectuals and serious people wouldn't dream of wasting 105 minutes on a movie like this. But hell, I didn't have a bad time. If you've already seen all the good stuff -- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Snatch, Shadow Of The Vampire, The Pledge and You Can Count On Me -- then go for it. But take your buddy along, not your girlfriend.

geoff lane asks: "Netscape, Mozilla and IE are all large programs capable of many functions which are mostly unused (Mozilla does attempt to shrink its runtime size by using DLLs.) Lynx, Chimera and a number of other browsers are smaller but with significantly fewer functions. A modern browser needs to support Javascript, Java and SSL. It doesn't need to support News, Gopher, FTP or e-mail - all of which have perfectly good applications available already (though there should be a way for the Web browser to sub-contract work to these applications). On occasion I've wondered if I could build a halfway decent Web browser from a few specialist program components (for the display and parsing of HTML mostly) and wget, tied together with shell script or Perl and using external programs for most of the necessary support functions. How small can a usable Web browser get? (assuming we define usable as meaning capable of displaying a Slashdot page reasonably correctly *grin!*)"

mcleodnine writes "Wired news pointed me to this article about a report (pdf) recently released by the Privacy Foundation on 'chatty' browser extensions. They examined how much information several different free extensions will send to the mother ship. The report also makes some interesting points about the 'flexible' privacy policies of the companies who 'give away' the extensions. Did you get what you paid for or more than you bargained for?"

keithp sent in a bit more information about the Font stuff we mentioned yesterday. Besides a nice shot of twm & xterm, Keith sent us proof in the form of a screenshot with Konqueror, the KDE web browser. He also says "Most of this code is in XFree86 CVS today. The hacked Tk and Qt libraries will be available in source form soon. Expect the latter to change; they were pretty seriously whacked. All of the text is rendered with the fine FreeType 2 library using 256 levels of translucency and composited to the screen using hardware acceleration at around 200000 glyphs/sec. If performance becomes an issue, I'm sure we can improve that. These images are regular anti-aliased images not optimized for any particular sub-pixel geometry. With a single X resource change, the text would be rasterized to improve quality for LCD screens as seen here." Now I'm just waiting for mozilla to support this.

Noryungi writes "The BBC is reporting about bacteria-propelled nano-subs that can be used to deliver drugs in the bloodstream. Interesting part is that (a) salmonella bacteria are ideal for this and (b) that prototypes could be just one year away. Nano-VaporWare?" Somehow, I think the one-year estimate seems a bit optimistic.

igz writes: "Someone is trying to set the world record for highest freefall, from over 31 miles above the Earth! There is no atmosphere up there, so speeds of up to 1.5 Mach are expected. Check it here." Whether this is insanity or courage is up to you, but it sure sounds like a fun ride. Cheryl Stearns is the insane / courageous diver, and she will jump wearing a pressure suit to counter the lack of air at (gulp!)165,000 feet up.

Luke B writes "According to news.com Yahoo! will be offering users encrypted e-mail. This comes through the support of Zixit (www.zixit.com). Head to C|Net for the full scoop." Interesting.

General_Corto writes: "The BBC is currently running an article about the latest global allocations of EM spectrum for radio astronomy. The entire range from 75GHz to 275Ghz has been given to them alone, which should ensure that all their readings are free from earth-based interference. Apparently, "there is more energy at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths washing through the Universe than there is of light or any other kind of radiation." Hopefully all those little green men out there use cellphones in that frequency range." You may also be interested in the home pages of the International Telecommunications Union and the International Astronomical Union.

Nericus asks: "I'm in the process of linking four separate networks via VPN. Each has its own little DNS sub-domain (lazy, quake, sector13 and overkill) with each possessing its own little branch of resources, here's the problem. I'm looking for a way to authenticate to a server (NIS) in each domain so the owners can have access control to the various resources. The problem lies in the fact that a decent chunk of the machines are running Windows 95, 98 or 2k (no flames, please) and I can't find a simple (re: cheap/free) method of authenticating Windows to a NIS server, M$ seems to think that Unix boxes should authenticate to a Windows box that'll emulate a NIS server, but won't authenticate TO one without third party software. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (P.S. Yes, I've considered having them authenticate to Samba, but that's a less than elegant solution from what I can tell) "

got_lost asks: "I'm trying to work out a mobile (read sub-notebook) solution for field servicing Cisco kit. I looked at notebooks but the cost/weight/battery use just outweighs the features I need. The possibles are Psion Revo & Palm or Visor + Keyboard. I haven't really played enough with these before to know their capabilities. I've also heard about a serial card + TRGpro PDA combo. Anyone care to comment? I guess I need suggestions for a portable (Palm/Visor/Psion) solution that allows serial comms. Ideally the solution would not involve the FS staff lugging a HotSync cradle around . I hope this makes sense and welcome all advice on this topic."

The Queen reminded me to post this: Last night's "X-Files" was a weird episode involving a video game gone wrong. It obviously was meant to promote discussion on violence in video games: "Healthy outlet for stress or promoting violence in society?" Personally I thought it was a crappy episode and not very suspenseful. Cheesy. Formulaic. Definitely sub-par for the show (even for its last few seasons), although it did have its moments. Did anyone else watch this?