Something you have to learn about Hollywood...
on
Review: 'Titan A.E.'
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· Score: 2
... is that it is generally taking into account the fact that each year, a *new generation* of movie goers is buying tickets, whereas most movie reviewers who complain of the same old plots aren't really considering this.
There are kids today who view Star Wars as a dusty old flick with cheesy hairdo's, a 'standard story line', and stupid looking special effects.
Face it, you're getting older. You might not like the same old bad-alien plots, but new moviegoers (new kids) who haven't quite gotten to that part about life yet, *are* buying tickets to see this story, in whatever form, manifest. And Hollywood knows this quite well.
So, start looking at different sources of entertainment. Hollywood is only ever going to try and do what's best for its bank accounts, and if that means more bad-alien movies, then that's what it's going to do... complaining about it belies your own misunderstanding of market regeneration, a Hollywood term.
Nah, they should just hire you two complete dorks to tell 'em all about it.
Seriously though, very interesting thread. I appreciate the fact that you two are very literate. Wish there were more like this around... sad to say, I can't play, but I have sure enjoyed watching.
What Loki does and thinks and says and produces for the Indrema is the only real thing I care about. The Indrema is a nice machine, it looks great on specs and it caters to a lot of my beliefs in the OSS ethos, but none of that matters a damn.
If Loki partners with these guys and says "yeah, we'll make games for it, and we'll give the SDK to make games for it a shot as well", then I'll be incredibly excited, and will be lining up outside Fry's or wherever the day these things go on sale.
If not, then it's gonna be a bumpy ride, for sure.
Weird. I've just spent the last few hours checking out various e-commerce solutions for various projects, and then this article pops up on Slashdot. Cool!
I've been playing with OpenSales (www.opensales.org) this evening - but both MiniVend and OpenSales are Perl-based projects.
Does anyone have any pointers for similarly-powerful e-commerce systems that are based on PHP? The reason I ask is that this would be easier for me to implement than a Perl-based system, given that I've already got a lot of PHP code for my catalogs and such.
On a separate note, it's really cool to see these sorts of systems being built and released under the GPL. Definitely the way for a new economy and new industry to expand unhindered, imho.
Me and a friend just picked up the Lego Mindstorms kit, and the first thing we thought of building was a 'robot building factory'.
The basic idea is to design a *very* simple robot that wanders (wanderbot) around a space, until it finds something that gets in its way - then it shoves this thing (lego parts) into a hopper.
The hopper feeds a 'factory' made out of the Mindstorm kit that makes more of these little wanderbots...
This has probably been done before, but we figured we'd give it a try our own way, and see what happens. The ultimate would be to have the new wanderbots appear in the same arena, all gathering lego bits together!
I would think it'd take more effort to establish a self-sustaining base on the Moon than it would on Mars, given the limited resources to be found on the Moon.
But, the advantage to the Moon is the proximity to Earth - if things go wrong, its just a 3 day trip to the plentiful resources of Earth.
So, we refine the self-sustaining tech needed to live on Mars, using our own backyard lab (the Moon), and once that's all happening, send the tech off to Mars. Not to mention that we could probably *manufacture* half of the Mars base from the Moon, which would be cheaper and less dangerous than doing it here on Earth. Heck, we could probably use all sorts of crazy ass tech on the moon to build things better, such as nuclear technology, etc.
Seems sorta backwards to me that we're ignoring this resource and trying to get straight to Mars instead, but then again I don't know how these things are budgeted. Perhaps there are political reasons for getting th Mars before doing the Moon thing - and after all, politics drive the space program.
... a year or so ago. Very cool technology, one of NASA's (JPL I believe) most interesting recent launches.
Its an ion-propulsion driven deep space explorer - it does not use plasma fusion.
Ion propulsion is a very weak (for now) method of getting around, and yes - in the DS1 experiment, it doesn't provide much more force than the weight of paper here on Earth, but gradually over time DS-1 will reach incredible speeds.
There's more about DS-1 on the NASA pages, but I'm too lazy to go find a link for you!:) I'm sure you could grep it yourself if you're interested.
Someone should correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the advantage of plasma over conventional chemical rockets is not in terms of thrust power, but reduced fuel requirements - meaning that you have lower thrust capabilities, but your plasma rocket can stay on for longer durations because it is more fuel-efficient - i.e. increasing thrust gradually over time (as is the case during a trip to Mars) instead of burning it all up at once in massive thrust expenditure.
The article mentioned that with a plasma engine, the craft to Mars would have thrust for the entire period, as opposed to chemical rockets where it would need to shut down after a while to conserve fuel... since plasma gives you constant acceleration (while far less thrust is produced than the short bursts of power that chemical rockets provide) over the entire distance, you get there faster...
So, plasma tech probably wouldn't be feasible for ground launches - more likely to be useful in space, though, where fuel is scarce (for now) and you gotta go longer distances.
Re:Ah, I *like* this idea...
on
Macs In Space!
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· Score: 2
Wow, thanks for the excellent link! That's a very intriguing presentation... and you're right, the sponsor is quite interesting! Wonder what they're going to do with that, eh? (Can you say supercomputer?)
Re:Wonder what the advantages are with a G4?
on
Macs In Space!
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· Score: 2
Good thinking, I forgot about the Altivec. Makes total sense.
They're usually 6 or 7 years behind the rest of the computer industry in terms of processing power, because of the complexities required to keep a processor running in space - by the time all the other 'packaging' problems have been solved for a specific processor to fly in space, processor design has moved on - so you end up with older Intel and Motorola chips being used in current modern satellite programs.
This is evident in the Shuttle, for example - they're still using IBM Thinkpad 486 laptops in the shuttle, because these are the only ones that have undergone the stress testing required by NASA to endure the flight... and only just recently was a Pentium processor even used.
I believe the Shuttle itself uses much simpler processors - I don't know the details, but I am under the impression that a lot of the compute systems on the Shuttle are using processors from the mid-80's, such as the Mot 68k, Intel 386/486's, etc.
So, the point of all this, is that it's actually exciting that a company is considering using a *modern* computing platform for space experiments. My first impulse when reading this article, in fact, was to wonder just what is the fastest/most powerful processor that's ever made it into space - perhaps this G4 will be it. Who knows?
Ah, I *like* this idea...
on
Macs In Space!
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· Score: 2
Satellite factories in space - now *that's* a great idea. Makes total sense - just ship up the raw materials by Shuttle, reducing flight costs (no wear-and-tear for launch design required), and put 'em together in space.
Excellent idea, and if this program succeeds I figure that this is probably one of the first industrialization steps for space - which will then lead to further expansion into space in general.
Very exciting stuff - I've made mental note to follow this experiment closer next year when it launches.
Wonder what the advantages are with a G4?
on
Macs In Space!
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· Score: 2
The article mentions that they are testing assembly and resilience procedures primarily in this flight - I wonder how the construction of a standard Apple G4 Mac relates to this, specifically?
I've often enjoyed the process of opening up my G4 for whatever reason, and marvelling at the design - are there specific aspects to Apples design, component-wise, which make the G4 an ideal test platform for this companies satellite assembly program? Unfortunately the article is a little light on details... perhaps some SilVal slashdotters who have more details about this group could shed some details?
This article was interesting from a pure fantasy perspective, and I'm sure more than 2 or 3 MacZealots out there have enjoyed reading the fictionalization of their own personal wet dreams, but even before this article I've decided to seriously consider moving from Windows to Mac OS X within the next 6 months anyway.
The reason? My new G4.
I'm the sort of computer user who doesn't have just one computer - I'm platform agnostic, and am quite happy putting money into different computers for different tasks.
For email (server), file sharing, web development and web hosting, I use Linux. No better platform for the job, imho.
For email (client) I use Windows (I'm hooked on Eudora, can't get off this addiction yet). I also use Windows for games, and for many of my clients I am expected to use it for development (Visual C++/cygnus, and Delphi). I also write music software for this platform, primarily because it's easier from the tools perspective (way more dev tools for Windows than Mac, for example), but also because the drivers for the gear I'm using are there, and only there. (Windows)
For music, I've recently moved to using an Apple G4, because there are some simply astounding sequencing/audio products for the Mac that really do just work well, no matter what. The timing is rock solid (MOTU 2408MkII with DP2.7 can't be beat in the timing department), and there's also a bit of 'fun factor' to using the extremely simple user interface of the Mac. I *used* to be a dedicated hardware sequencer user, but those days are rapidly passing as I do more and more studio work and less and less live stuff. (For live work, dedicated hardware sequencers are *essential* - nothing worse than having Scandisk or Sherlock fire up in the middle of a set, heh heh! It's happened to me...)
But now that I've gotten more and more into the G4 and the Apple Mac OS way of doing things, I'm really looking forward to Mac OS X being released to the general public later this year. Why?
Because it has, at least on paper, the best of all of the above platforms:
1. A good user interface. (Mac OS feature) 2. A good set of development tools. (Windows feature) 3. Access to the command line and the power of all that. (Linux feature) 4. Unix-like architecture. (Linux feature)
It *doesn't* have the driver support that Windows has, and to a lesser degree, Mac OS. *BUT* that doesn't matter - everything that I'm interested in, hardware-wise, in the very near future uses either USB or Firewire - and Mac OS X has one of the best Firewire and USB implementations around. So I'm not terribly concerned about that.
Plus, it runs on the Apple G4, which is one of the smoothest, coolest, kick-ass-est computing platforms I've seen in a long time. I actually experience *pleasure* at the thought of upgrading my RAM in that machine, or at the idea of putting a new hard disk in it... when was the last time I had that experience as a PC user? *Never*. Adding a hard disk or RAM, or doing some other sort of internal work to a PC has always, no matter what OS I use, been a dreary thing - and this is just a minor point, but in my view its one of the things the G4 got right, and which is making it a whole lot more attractive as a platform.
I'll still be platform-agnostic in 6 months. I'll still have my machines doing the tasks I assign them. But I'm thinking I'll probably be selling my existing PC laptop and having a look at whatever Apple laptop hardware runs Mac OS X in the near future, because to me, that really is an exciting new frontier.
The specs mention DVD. I wonder if this means the DVD player is in the base unit (referred to as its "Access Point")... probably not, because the RF wouldn't have the bandwidth to support DVD.
Or would it? I don't see where you'd put a DVD in the handheld webpad, yet the specs have it mentioned. Could this just be a buzzword seed?
I definitely like the concept. I'd buy one right now if it were available, but in the meantime - my I-Opener will have to do the job.
My only point is, the movie stank, let it die the death it deserves - stories like this are just gonna keep it alive...
Personally, I'd much rather have heard from Slashdot that "Stainless Steel Rat" is currently in production, than stirring up the shit about a bad movie...
Thus, the stories that get the eyeballs, that look at the ads, that increase ad sales, that increase revenue, that provide the execs with something to report to the shareholders, will be the stories that get posted.
Stirring up this BE thread is just a way to get the eyeballs.
... what possible point could there be in letting it live a longer life through this contest, other than garnering some sort of stupid egotistical buzz a person gets by trashing other peoples work?
While we're at it, why don't we try an "Open Source Software that Truly Sucks" competition?
Or a "Worst Sucking Slashdot Post Ever" competition?
Oh, oh, I know - a "Things that Suck harder than anything else that ever Sucked" competition... yeah, we get to really pile on the criticism of anything that's ever Sucked. Great.
In the meantime, off to kuro5hin.org for some real geek news of interest...
Who said anything about conspiracy? I didn't use that word - you did, and I certainly don't think there's a conspiracy here - I just want to know what the point of this stupid story is?
Because if they go away and stop reading, Slashdot's valuation falters.
And my point is: crap like this 'contest' is pushing people away from Slashdot to other news sites. Which sucks, because I personally like to read Slashdot, and want it to stick around so we can read some *real* news, not just tabloid sensationalism.
I'm pro-Slashdot. I don't think articles like this one are.
Whats the point in having this 'contest', exactly? Slashdot didn't have one for other horrible movies like "Mission To Mars" or "Wing Commander". Shouldn't we just let "Battlefield Earth" die the death it deserves and let it go off into obscurity like so many other bad sci-fi flicks from the Hollywood machine, or am I missing something?
Is there something special about this dismal flick, particularly?
So what's different about "Battlefield Earth"? Could it be that Slashdot is just trying to get a whole "Battlefield Earth sucks because it's written by L. Ron Hubbard" thread going, or some other similar sort of rabble rousing? Perhaps you're hoping to start a new wave of religion bashing on Slashdot, or something?
Geeks resorting to tabloid maneuvers. Wow.
This sort of article appearing on Slashdot really makes me wonder...
Slashdot Mirror
... is that it is generally taking into account the fact that each year, a *new generation* of movie goers is buying tickets, whereas most movie reviewers who complain of the same old plots aren't really considering this.
There are kids today who view Star Wars as a dusty old flick with cheesy hairdo's, a 'standard story line', and stupid looking special effects.
Face it, you're getting older. You might not like the same old bad-alien plots, but new moviegoers (new kids) who haven't quite gotten to that part about life yet, *are* buying tickets to see this story, in whatever form, manifest. And Hollywood knows this quite well.
So, start looking at different sources of entertainment. Hollywood is only ever going to try and do what's best for its bank accounts, and if that means more bad-alien movies, then that's what it's going to do... complaining about it belies your own misunderstanding of market regeneration, a Hollywood term.
Nah, they should just hire you two complete dorks to tell 'em all about it.
Seriously though, very interesting thread. I appreciate the fact that you two are very literate. Wish there were more like this around... sad to say, I can't play, but I have sure enjoyed watching.
What Loki does and thinks and says and produces for the Indrema is the only real thing I care about. The Indrema is a nice machine, it looks great on specs and it caters to a lot of my beliefs in the OSS ethos, but none of that matters a damn.
If Loki partners with these guys and says "yeah, we'll make games for it, and we'll give the SDK to make games for it a shot as well", then I'll be incredibly excited, and will be lining up outside Fry's or wherever the day these things go on sale.
If not, then it's gonna be a bumpy ride, for sure.
Weird. I've just spent the last few hours checking out various e-commerce solutions for various projects, and then this article pops up on Slashdot. Cool!
I've been playing with OpenSales (www.opensales.org) this evening - but both MiniVend and OpenSales are Perl-based projects.
Does anyone have any pointers for similarly-powerful e-commerce systems that are based on PHP? The reason I ask is that this would be easier for me to implement than a Perl-based system, given that I've already got a lot of PHP code for my catalogs and such.
On a separate note, it's really cool to see these sorts of systems being built and released under the GPL. Definitely the way for a new economy and new industry to expand unhindered, imho.
... ordered the Zubrin book, will read it this week.
Thanks for the reference meloneg!
Me and a friend just picked up the Lego Mindstorms kit, and the first thing we thought of building was a 'robot building factory'.
The basic idea is to design a *very* simple robot that wanders (wanderbot) around a space, until it finds something that gets in its way - then it shoves this thing (lego parts) into a hopper.
The hopper feeds a 'factory' made out of the Mindstorm kit that makes more of these little wanderbots...
This has probably been done before, but we figured we'd give it a try our own way, and see what happens. The ultimate would be to have the new wanderbots appear in the same arena, all gathering lego bits together!
I would think it'd take more effort to establish a self-sustaining base on the Moon than it would on Mars, given the limited resources to be found on the Moon.
But, the advantage to the Moon is the proximity to Earth - if things go wrong, its just a 3 day trip to the plentiful resources of Earth.
So, we refine the self-sustaining tech needed to live on Mars, using our own backyard lab (the Moon), and once that's all happening, send the tech off to Mars. Not to mention that we could probably *manufacture* half of the Mars base from the Moon, which would be cheaper and less dangerous than doing it here on Earth. Heck, we could probably use all sorts of crazy ass tech on the moon to build things better, such as nuclear technology, etc.
Seems sorta backwards to me that we're ignoring this resource and trying to get straight to Mars instead, but then again I don't know how these things are budgeted. Perhaps there are political reasons for getting th Mars before doing the Moon thing - and after all, politics drive the space program.
... a year or so ago. Very cool technology, one of NASA's (JPL I believe) most interesting recent launches.
:) I'm sure you could grep it yourself if you're interested.
Its an ion-propulsion driven deep space explorer - it does not use plasma fusion.
Ion propulsion is a very weak (for now) method of getting around, and yes - in the DS1 experiment, it doesn't provide much more force than the weight of paper here on Earth, but gradually over time DS-1 will reach incredible speeds.
There's more about DS-1 on the NASA pages, but I'm too lazy to go find a link for you!
Someone should correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the advantage of plasma over conventional chemical rockets is not in terms of thrust power, but reduced fuel requirements - meaning that you have lower thrust capabilities, but your plasma rocket can stay on for longer durations because it is more fuel-efficient - i.e. increasing thrust gradually over time (as is the case during a trip to Mars) instead of burning it all up at once in massive thrust expenditure.
The article mentioned that with a plasma engine, the craft to Mars would have thrust for the entire period, as opposed to chemical rockets where it would need to shut down after a while to conserve fuel... since plasma gives you constant acceleration (while far less thrust is produced than the short bursts of power that chemical rockets provide) over the entire distance, you get there faster...
So, plasma tech probably wouldn't be feasible for ground launches - more likely to be useful in space, though, where fuel is scarce (for now) and you gotta go longer distances.
Wow, thanks for the excellent link! That's a very intriguing presentation ... and you're right, the sponsor is quite interesting! Wonder what they're going to do with that, eh? (Can you say supercomputer?)
Good thinking, I forgot about the Altivec. Makes total sense.
They're not 'normal', dude.
... and only just recently was a Pentium processor even used.
They're usually 6 or 7 years behind the rest of the computer industry in terms of processing power, because of the complexities required to keep a processor running in space - by the time all the other 'packaging' problems have been solved for a specific processor to fly in space, processor design has moved on - so you end up with older Intel and Motorola chips being used in current modern satellite programs.
This is evident in the Shuttle, for example - they're still using IBM Thinkpad 486 laptops in the shuttle, because these are the only ones that have undergone the stress testing required by NASA to endure the flight
I believe the Shuttle itself uses much simpler processors - I don't know the details, but I am under the impression that a lot of the compute systems on the Shuttle are using processors from the mid-80's, such as the Mot 68k, Intel 386/486's, etc.
So, the point of all this, is that it's actually exciting that a company is considering using a *modern* computing platform for space experiments. My first impulse when reading this article, in fact, was to wonder just what is the fastest/most powerful processor that's ever made it into space - perhaps this G4 will be it. Who knows?
Satellite factories in space - now *that's* a great idea. Makes total sense - just ship up the raw materials by Shuttle, reducing flight costs (no wear-and-tear for launch design required), and put 'em together in space.
Excellent idea, and if this program succeeds I figure that this is probably one of the first industrialization steps for space - which will then lead to further expansion into space in general.
Very exciting stuff - I've made mental note to follow this experiment closer next year when it launches.
The article mentions that they are testing assembly and resilience procedures primarily in this flight - I wonder how the construction of a standard Apple G4 Mac relates to this, specifically?
I've often enjoyed the process of opening up my G4 for whatever reason, and marvelling at the design - are there specific aspects to Apples design, component-wise, which make the G4 an ideal test platform for this companies satellite assembly program? Unfortunately the article is a little light on details... perhaps some SilVal slashdotters who have more details about this group could shed some details?
Yeah, but you're taking it out of context. Linus then goes on to say - "Here's the source, fix it if you've got >8mb".
:)
Gates never said that.
So fuck you, asshole!
This article was interesting from a pure fantasy perspective, and I'm sure more than 2 or 3 MacZealots out there have enjoyed reading the fictionalization of their own personal wet dreams, but even before this article I've decided to seriously consider moving from Windows to Mac OS X within the next 6 months anyway.
... when was the last time I had that experience as a PC user? *Never*. Adding a hard disk or RAM, or doing some other sort of internal work to a PC has always, no matter what OS I use, been a dreary thing - and this is just a minor point, but in my view its one of the things the G4 got right, and which is making it a whole lot more attractive as a platform.
The reason? My new G4.
I'm the sort of computer user who doesn't have just one computer - I'm platform agnostic, and am quite happy putting money into different computers for different tasks.
For email (server), file sharing, web development and web hosting, I use Linux. No better platform for the job, imho.
For email (client) I use Windows (I'm hooked on Eudora, can't get off this addiction yet). I also use Windows for games, and for many of my clients I am expected to use it for development (Visual C++/cygnus, and Delphi). I also write music software for this platform, primarily because it's easier from the tools perspective (way more dev tools for Windows than Mac, for example), but also because the drivers for the gear I'm using are there, and only there. (Windows)
For music, I've recently moved to using an Apple G4, because there are some simply astounding sequencing/audio products for the Mac that really do just work well, no matter what. The timing is rock solid (MOTU 2408MkII with DP2.7 can't be beat in the timing department), and there's also a bit of 'fun factor' to using the extremely simple user interface of the Mac. I *used* to be a dedicated hardware sequencer user, but those days are rapidly passing as I do more and more studio work and less and less live stuff. (For live work, dedicated hardware sequencers are *essential* - nothing worse than having Scandisk or Sherlock fire up in the middle of a set, heh heh! It's happened to me...)
But now that I've gotten more and more into the G4 and the Apple Mac OS way of doing things, I'm really looking forward to Mac OS X being released to the general public later this year. Why?
Because it has, at least on paper, the best of all of the above platforms:
1. A good user interface. (Mac OS feature)
2. A good set of development tools. (Windows feature)
3. Access to the command line and the power of all that. (Linux feature)
4. Unix-like architecture. (Linux feature)
It *doesn't* have the driver support that Windows has, and to a lesser degree, Mac OS. *BUT* that doesn't matter - everything that I'm interested in, hardware-wise, in the very near future uses either USB or Firewire - and Mac OS X has one of the best Firewire and USB implementations around. So I'm not terribly concerned about that.
Plus, it runs on the Apple G4, which is one of the smoothest, coolest, kick-ass-est computing platforms I've seen in a long time. I actually experience *pleasure* at the thought of upgrading my RAM in that machine, or at the idea of putting a new hard disk in it
I'll still be platform-agnostic in 6 months. I'll still have my machines doing the tasks I assign them. But I'm thinking I'll probably be selling my existing PC laptop and having a look at whatever Apple laptop hardware runs Mac OS X in the near future, because to me, that really is an exciting new frontier.
"more than the mass of the universe..."
Who knows, maybe the majority of the univers is I-129?
;)
The specs mention DVD. I wonder if this means the DVD player is in the base unit (referred to as its "Access Point")... probably not, because the RF wouldn't have the bandwidth to support DVD.
Or would it? I don't see where you'd put a DVD in the handheld webpad, yet the specs have it mentioned. Could this just be a buzzword seed?
I definitely like the concept. I'd buy one right now if it were available, but in the meantime - my I-Opener will have to do the job.
My only point is, the movie stank, let it die the death it deserves - stories like this are just gonna keep it alive...
Personally, I'd much rather have heard from Slashdot that "Stainless Steel Rat" is currently in production, than stirring up the shit about a bad movie...
Sheesh. Woo. Something stinks...
Thus, the stories that get the eyeballs, that look at the ads, that increase ad sales, that increase revenue, that provide the execs with something to report to the shareholders, will be the stories that get posted.
Stirring up this BE thread is just a way to get the eyeballs.
... what possible point could there be in letting it live a longer life through this contest, other than garnering some sort of stupid egotistical buzz a person gets by trashing other peoples work?
... yeah, we get to really pile on the criticism of anything that's ever Sucked. Great.
While we're at it, why don't we try an "Open Source Software that Truly Sucks" competition?
Or a "Worst Sucking Slashdot Post Ever" competition?
Oh, oh, I know - a "Things that Suck harder than anything else that ever Sucked" competition
In the meantime, off to kuro5hin.org for some real geek news of interest...
Who said anything about conspiracy? I didn't use that word - you did, and I certainly don't think there's a conspiracy here - I just want to know what the point of this stupid story is?
Because if they go away and stop reading, Slashdot's valuation falters.
And my point is: crap like this 'contest' is pushing people away from Slashdot to other news sites. Which sucks, because I personally like to read Slashdot, and want it to stick around so we can read some *real* news, not just tabloid sensationalism.
I'm pro-Slashdot. I don't think articles like this one are.
Whats the point in having this 'contest', exactly? Slashdot didn't have one for other horrible movies like "Mission To Mars" or "Wing Commander". Shouldn't we just let "Battlefield Earth" die the death it deserves and let it go off into obscurity like so many other bad sci-fi flicks from the Hollywood machine, or am I missing something?
Is there something special about this dismal flick, particularly?
So what's different about "Battlefield Earth"? Could it be that Slashdot is just trying to get a whole "Battlefield Earth sucks because it's written by L. Ron Hubbard" thread going, or some other similar sort of rabble rousing? Perhaps you're hoping to start a new wave of religion bashing on Slashdot, or something?
Geeks resorting to tabloid maneuvers. Wow.
This sort of article appearing on Slashdot really makes me wonder...