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CodeCon, Placebos, Fear, Yoyo-hacking, Dune, etc.

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the these-are-no-ordinary-yo-yos dept.

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."

10 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. What do these have in common? by arcanumas · · Score: 5, Funny
    For those wondering what placebos, yoyos , random numbers, fear , CodeCon and Dune have in common:

    Only on slashdot have these been combined in a single sentence.

    --
    Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
    1. Re:What do these have in common? by onyxruby · · Score: 5, Funny

      And only on slashdot would they have a good chunk of the readers never bat an eye at such a combo.

  2. Yo Yo hacking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is that when you hack a server to bring it down, wait for it to come back up again then down, up, down...

  3. What the hell was that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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*

  4. Re:Since when is this news? by lutefish · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It's a column. She writes chatty, informal bits on tech and geeks for the SF Guardian. Columns suceed precisely because of their individual tone; although writing in a tech-heavy area, there are still the unwired masses that she reaches, as well.

    Although she's been writing for the Guardian for a while, she's been writing, at least occasionally, on geek subjects/the web since Bad Subjects, 1995. If you want to fault /. for posting it, why bother commenting on how, presumably as a 'true' geek, that you're completely and utterly unimpressed with Newitz's writings/geek credentials?

    --
    Amor omnia vincit. Occasionally.
  5. Bit short of an article, but by prat393 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    She does make a good point about how arbritrary perceptions are. I think the most interesting thing she said was that the brain ceases to interpret pain as pain, because this indicates some understanding that the signals are still being processed, just not in the normal way. Thing about it for a second. That's not even the normal "ignore your pain" ideal, it goes even further. What if we really do have the ability to interpret our senses as we see fit?

  6. Yo-yo hacking by FraggedSquid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Using glue, you can install Linux on your yoyo.

    --
    You don't need a lab to make mud.
  7. Since when is this +5 insightful? by Vintermann · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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."

    Not every article on slashdot is revolutionary brilliant. Neither are all replies. Get over it. I for one can't see what's so insightful about your whining.

    --
    xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
  8. linkage by doom · · Score: 5, Informative
    If you were wondering what this is all about... Annalee Newitz (with two N's) is the author of a regular print-media column called "Techsploitation", of which this story was an example. More on that: http://www.techsploitation.com/writing/ http://www.alternet.org/alsoby.html?Author=2188 More about CodeCon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodeCon http://www.codecon.org/2004/ http://www.oblomovka.com/search.php3?q=%3Cspan%20c lass= http://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/0 00050.html The Schmoo Hacker Group: "The Shmoo Group is a non-profit think-tank comprised of security professionals from around the world who donate their free time and energy to information security research and development." http://www.shmoo.com/ Wi-Fi Remains a Work in Progress A latte, a Wi-Fi link and a hacker Wireless network worries? Get a dog! "Need To Know" (a zine in fixed-width font, the way god intended the net): http://www.ntk.net/ Ken Schalk, yo-yo hacker, is the author of Vesta: "Vesta is an advanced system for source code control, versioning, configuration management, and building. It is an alternative to CVS+make." http://freshmeat.net/projects/vesta/ http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?relea se_id=156198 Sparky's http://www.milkycat.com/toiletree.htm Jonathan Moore evidentally did a bunch of wifi networking down in Santa Cruz, and is the author of the MobileMesh software http://wiki.haven.sh/index.php/WikiWikiWan Jonathan Moore's CodeCon presentation was about: "Hacking Social Networks part II (Don't search private data)" http://more.theory.org/archives/000110.html#more Science Magazine is put out by the AAAS, and does great in-depth coverage of general science (and insanely detailed minutia about biology): http://www.sciencemag.org/ Placebos http://placebo.nih.gov/ Oh, and about "GenToo 2004": http://www.gentoo.org/news/20031203-news.xml

    Heh... note the email address Annalee Newitz is using here... she evidentally creates a new mail alias for every column: sugarpill@techsploitation.com

    Ah, slash ids pushing a billion and whining about what a sewer it's become...

  9. Dune by damiena · · Score: 5, Funny

    it reminds me of that cool scene in the movie Dune, when Paul sticks his hand in the pain box for a really long time and you hear that spooky voice-over intoning, "I will not fear; fear is the mind-killer."

    Yeah, it was a great movie... Now if only someone would write one of those novelized adaptations. That would be great!