Bill Joy On His Own Future, And The World's

geeber writes "There is an interesting interview with Bill Joy in the current edition of the Magazine in the New York Times. He is still obssesed with what he calls a 'civilization-changing event' brought on by the fast pace of research into dangerous technologies such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Another interesting tidbit: he has flirted with the idea of going to work for Google."

Comments

other words in the title

[frovingslosh]

Perhaps the point was that the "He" in question was not in the title, so what's your point? Rather, the "He" was in the apparent middle of a poorly constructed sentence. While there should have been a comma in front of it and it should not have been capatilized (unless there was a period before it and it was the start of a different sentence), the real problem is that this front page article talks about someone named Joy that many people have never heard of and makes no effort to say who in the world he is. Instead it only links to a registration required website. It was sloppy and lame in multiple ways.

Re:other words in the title

[digime]

The He in question a reference to something in the article. It has nothing to do with the title, and in the context in which the author meant it, yes it should have been capitalized (btw - learn to spell that word). Since you can't bother to be informed about what you're talking about, here you go...

"...computer architect, as he often describes himself -- a Silicon Valley deity, generally regarded as one of the most gifted..."

Re:other words in the title

[geeber]

Well, my original submission had a period in it before the offensive capital "He". Timothy saw fit to remove it (and a few other links to the NYT and magazine I put in the submission). So what? It's a minor typo; they happen all the time.

Do people make a reference to who exactly Bill Gates is every time he is mentioned in a post? Similarly, on a tech site devoted to OS news, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect one of the founders of Sun and architects of Berkeley Unix to enjoy the same name recognition.

Finally, regarding the link to the New York Times requiring a registration. I personally am tired of people complaining about the NYT registration policy. They provide quality news for free with (IMO) a minimally intrusive registration. Don't like it - go out and pay for the paper then.

Your nit picks were sloppy and lame in multiple ways.

Moderation, meta-mod, meta-meta mod?

[code_rage]

Has /. become stale? I hate to sound like one of those people who says "thiss place used to be cool, until it hit 1e6 members", because one could draw that line at 1e5, 1e4, 1e3 just as easily. I'm a great believer in the notion that quality, not quantity, is what matters. The moderation system and the meta-mod system are supposed to deal with that, and perhaps those methods achieve a good result up to a point (1e6?).

But I have to agree, I often find that the tangents that get discussed are often irrelevant, and the quality of discussion has in some threads been lost. Stupid little retorts and one-liners seem to replace discourse.

I guess I could meta-mod more often instead of complaining. But ultimately, I wonder if even that would help.

I've sometimes felt that some of the strengths of /. can also become weaknesses. Sometimes, posters say things that are clearly not based on any understanding of the facts. If they seem uninformed on a topic that I know something about, I try to supply them with correct information. But it can be frustrating. I have to admit that my enthusiasm for /. has waned somewhat because of the mediocrity.

Re:Dangerous technologies

[sydb]

Why is everyone frantically sucking off Bill Joy?

Because his cock is so tasty.