Slashdot Mirror
CodeCon, Placebos, Fear, Yoyo-hacking, Dune, etc.
doom writes "Annalee Newitz rambles about CodeCon, placebos,
random numbers, fear, yoyo-hacking, Dune and more.
This is what it means to be a geek:
Techsploitation."
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i know
if i wanted articles of this level of intelectual calibre i would get my lowdown from "TechTV" or "the Screensavers"
Is it such a slow day at Slashdot? Why is this dump of mental diarrhea "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters"? Someone is at some geek conference, throws a bunch of sci-fi references with a couple of buzzwords and some piece about a software that doesn't work but "will do soon" and suddenly we have a truly wondrous article about how good it is to be a geek.
... what is not journalism. It's mostly a rambling trend of thought that, unfortunately, is very publishable on the internet.
"Hacking YoYos" ??? Hardly. That's not new, and it certainly wasn't invented at this conference. People (and self) have always 'modified' a yoyo when it wasn't performing well.
I won't even go into the logic the writer espouses while complaining that doctors are allowed to cause pain in the name of science. Anyone remember the 'call for volunteers' that NASA wanted to lay on their back at a negative incline for months to simulate weightlessness? That's a hell of allot more intrusive and damaging than being poked or heated.
Enough New-Age crap.
I have no idea what that article was about. What is CodeCon? Nevermind the shiny LED's and the yo-yo's, someone find that writer an editor. In fact, speaking of editors, how the hell did this get posted in the first place?
Oh, and for some reason, the Shmoo site is down. *goes in search of a mirror*
I liked it too. When has a reporter/journalist gone to one of these conventions, and moreover, written about it? This article was a nice way to relax for a bit between classes (having a 7:30 English class), and was amusing to read. Maybe I'm not a 'true geek', but Slashdot doesn't have to just be 'news'. Sometimes I read the comments just for the 'Funny' ones to lighten up my day.
Somehow "hacking a yo-yo" seems much more in the spirit of what hacking (as opposed to cracking) is all about -- playfully seeking to improve the way things work.
;)
But then I suppose that I'm just grasping after an earlier halcyon age, when everything was somehow better (including spelling)
...humorless literalism.
It's foolish and ill-informed when people accuse columnists (or anyone else who isn't a journalist) of being poor journalists. Columnists aren't journalists in the same way that a reporter is: they have a much wider ambit--commentary, opinion, whatever.
Annalee Newitz's job isn't to go to a conference and report the facts: it's to ramble, amuse and, yeah, maybe inform a little.
And it's not merely "publishable on the internet," purdue. As far as I'm concerned, she's one of the few reasons to pick up the Bay Guardian, a very much dead-trees-and-ink city weekly.
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