I wonder what prompted Gateway to sell off all the Amiga stuff after buying it? More to the point, one wonders if they made a profit off of the sale, and if they will continue to broker companies. Might be a lucrative niche market for cash heavy companies..
I imagine you guys can actually hire some full-time people to serve as editors and content publishers, and have staging servers--all those lovely things you realize you can have once your website actually has a budget and tons of viewers. You've talked about how there are better ways to write the slash code--in different languages, etc, so will you be hiring programmers or will this roll along as a geeky-open-source-fast-food-underground-zine forever thing? (sorry for overdoing the last bit there:) thanks
I believe that an Open Content license would be excellent for databases, and I agree that advertising (via banners or text) is an incredibly bad revenue generator, and should not pass for a business plan at all.
Yahoo makes money by selling targeted advertising and via selected business partnerships. Since they have huge brand name recognition and large traffic, they can afford to do so. EBay makes money as well, because they manage to turn a profit based on the volume and addictive nature of auctions.
Many academic libraries pay (huge) subscription fees to permit per-domain access to such things as the Consumer Reports or L/N databases. Accesses to the databases are limited to a matching sub or top level domain reverse lookup. This seems to work well, and off-site university affiliates can get in remotely via proxy.
My suggestion would be to have a GPL or Open Content license on databases or pay via subscription that would be domain based. So, if I'm Consumer Reports, I will have a web or app client connect to the ns.consumerreports.com nameserver and have it assign my current ip a name in our.subscriberpaid.consumerreports.com subdomain, which would validate me for the site. (I have no affiliation with them, just using as an example.)
While it is one of the first truly unbiased and highly technical articles on the K7 and G4 chips (instead of rumors and performance "benchmark" drivel), it does not say that much about the chips in the end. It should have concluded with a stronger statement about the efficiency of the G4 chip.
The US Govt is often criticized for implementing obscenely expensive solutions to problems when simple ones would have done the job better. This can be applied the the K7 vs G4 question, for it is always better to have efficiency when the performance is the same.
Rumor has it that Intel is running the new Itanium chips currently with 30 watts of power consumption, over twice that of the G4. If I upgraded my motherboard to the itanium (tm), I would have to get a new case or power supply because of the incredible inefficiency of the chip. That is not novel engineering, but sluggish engineering, something which is not prized in this day in age.
Hi Woz, I know that you've done a great deal with teaching youngsters about technology. I volunteer teaching 3rd and 4th graders, and often wonder if I'm going about it the best way. What would you recommend is the best approach to teaching children how to use technology and retain that information?
Wow, wouldn't everyone like to have an exponential salary! Check out his monthly checks: $24, 48, 96, 192, 384, 768, 1536, 3072
So in other words it takes him 8 months to make enough to really "earn a living". So what does he do except work out of savings for the first 7 months? Ordering all those products has got to rack up.
Should we feel sorry for him? Nope. Here's why... ...6144,12288, 24576, 49152 are the monthly checks for months 9-12. More than I'll ever see.
A grand total if he makes it all year? $95,208. Not bad, but let's remember he only makes $168 in his first 3 months and he'll have no life (or wife!). Sheesh
These setups have been used in a lot of commercials recently too. The problem is, as always in the film industry, that the setup is much too expensive for small studios to pioneer some amazing things with them. Often it is the independent filmmakers who revolutionize techniques in cinematography, for they aren't afraid to experiment with techniques or styles.
I think we'll be moving more in this direction, in terms of filmmaking production, as well as satellite distribution to theaters. Viewers always wish to be awed, so I don't think this style will be a fad.
..because I Anal sounds kinda funny to the under 18 popualation of slashdot;).
On a serious note, we are not a direct democracy, but a democratic republic. There is a semblance of "one man (person), one vote" in the United States, but we have chosen to implement heirarchy to get things done more quickly than waiting for 200 million Americans to cast their votes on each issue.
Given the precarious state of IP (Intellectual property) laws and patents, it is not always easy to determine what is illegal and what isn't. Programmers do need intermediaries such as lawyers to advise.
Try telling the Federal Marshall that we can "deal with the system ourselves" when he's got the warrant at the front door at some damned inconvenient hour. It is inevitable that end users (citizens) will need tech support (legal counsel) from companies (governments) who designed (authored) certain pieces of code (law) when they're uncertain or confused.
First off, do you believe the fascination the media has had with hackers/crackers is merely a fad and will go away (like Y2k paranoia), or are computers in these times too much of an integral part of society to ignore? Case in point- your local newspaper prints which homes have been robbed in the last week. Isn't it plausible that they'll one day publish which corporations have been compromised?
Two, do you believe hacking can be incorporated? Packet Storm has been bought by Knoll-O'Gara as you know. Is it plausible that previously taboo security information repositories/experts will become obtained/retained by corporations in the future?
1.5 million dollars for a 3 university project? I don't imagine they'll get very far in their research unless they are very, very resourceful. Coming from someone who has a research physicist in the immediate family, 1.5M is on the very low end of the grants scale. I know of some recent biology development grants that have exceeded 1 billion.
Another issues is the practicality of quantity manufacture should the U of O researchers come up with a chip. Chip manufacturing at.28 microns isn't going to cut it anymore. However, should these developments occur, we would most certainly shatter Moore's "Law" one and for all.
First off, I'd like to say to Jim that I'm very impressed with the descriptions of the technology. However, have a friend redesign the website so that you can sell the idea better to potential investors.
To RISCy--find a company to work for which would like to explore your ideas as a potential product, as opposed to trying to start the business yourself. I would try getting a job as a unix/sys admin (as you've described yourself on your website) with a software company which could develop (what I assume is) the software which you have an idea for.
It is a hell of a lot easier to integrate products into someone else's existing business model than to start up your own. That doesn't mean people try, but it's the truth.
Best of luck to Jim and RISCy in their endeavors--
I'm sure that everyone caught the dissapointment that Todd felt from the community. People got on his back too much, something which I don't believe he expected. If he had wanted to continue, he could have reopened in a relatively small amount of time--say 2 weeks--had the dedication from the community been there.
How is that possible? Donated bandwidth, users sending in next month's fees ahead of time, class action lawsuit--any of these things could have helped. However, evidently users were pissed off and left Todd to stand as a one man mountain to bear the brunt of the sorting out and accusations.
C'mon guys, it's the holidays and we can't even give a little.
I might put on the list one of the creators of ICQ, Hotline, or even AIM, all of which are transforming communications, creating more new kinds of communities in a day than was once possible in years. Or a geneticist who, for better or worse, is slaving away on the Human Genome Project, and is about to unravel the secrets of human life.
Woah there, horsey. ICQ development for multi-OS platforms has been stagnant, to say the least. This is not impressive or redeeming in any way. AIM has been as bad as Amazon vs Barnes recently, pushing Yahoo and Microsoft out using of the AIM protocol to make an alternative client. Hotline's creator, Adam Hinkley, was a 17 year old kid who did change a lot of people's online lives--however the company was ousted from him by some sleazy investors in Canada. He no longer has control of the program, and is being sued in the Australian legal system.
Finally, the man who runs the Human Genome project is a raging capatalist in every sense of the word, a person who believes that his scientific discoveries should be soley his. This raises incredible moral and ethical issues, along the same lines but with more ramifications than the Amazon/LinkSynergy/Doubleclick patenting claims.
IMHO, none of those people deserve the award, completely ignoring the fact that theses technologies had little impact on the world in 1999. How about Kofe Anan or Madeline Albright being nominated for mediating and resolving large international conflicts? Or the Ireland peace process's apparent success? Let's stand back from technology for a moment and realize that no matter how big the net grows, there will be at least 50% of the world which will never surf the internet.
The one thing that having a color lcd would do to confuse the "zen of Palm" would be having two different versions of programs, one color and one monochrome. Hopefully Palm would be able to figure out how to incorporate "old" app support with new color apps.
The second concern of mine, besides the fact that my Palm III will be obsolete, is that currently Palms can run for almost a month on 2 AAA batteries. That is not going to be true for Palms with color screens.
Have we all blocked web ads from our browsers because Doubleclick has patented online advertising? Nope. You have the right to boycott Amazon, however it is rather silly. Yes Amazon should have sued Barnes and Noble instead of patenting, but they shouldn't necessarily be punished for their lawyers' recommendations. There are worse companies than Amazon out there.
Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's boxes have conveyed to every radio with the potential to disembowl in the sportscar industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, Amazon.com Inc., Compaq, Time Magazine Inc., and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense mice to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's lucid products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such knaves and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and wives that exhibit the potential to disguise Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly run consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not punch with Microsoft's stapler.
First off, Time has name some real twerps as "Man of the Year", such as Newt Gingrich not so long ago. He served his wife divorce papers when she was dying in the hospital of ovarian cancer. Nice guy right?
As for CmdrTaco, I challenge thee in asking whether you have stopped banner ads on Slashdot because DoubleClick has tried to patent online advertisng. Boycotts of stores with sufficient reason are warranted, and although it is obviously a person decision, I haven't stopped buying from amazon just because their lawyers did something stupid.
Bezos is an innovator and a smart businessman. I'd agree that he might deserve the award this year, seeing as ecommerce sales have tripled this holiday season.
Lastly, the New York Times Sunday 12/19 edition (today) in the Business section has a very interesting piece on why ecommerce players like amazon and eToys lose money on every order.
It has been up to the end user to standardize clients. I use ICQ because my friends do, and I don't use AIM because my friends don't use AOL. They will have a hard time standardizing because messaging clients are by nature proprietary--they want to keep you using their client, much as portals try to keep you from going outside of their website.
AOL probably won't merge AIM with ICQ, because AOL is still using IE even though they bought Netscape. Just because they own Netscape, doesn't mean they've merged it into AOL.
I believe Excite was the first company to come up with this idea, when it was Architext Inc. They used a bit of distributed crawling on Stanford owned Sun boxes in off-hours.
The idea of a client reporting crawling is interesting but I have two issues with it. First, it's essential what is being done with services like AllAdvantage or free ISPs. They may monitor the sites you go to in order to build a database for advertisers, instead of for searching. The second issue is, net surfing would be bogged down considerably unless there was high bandwidth for the project.
One way someone could do this though, is to create an open proxy server on a big pipe, which would log all the sites users went to. This would be voluntary of course, and the database of sites could be added to the findings of a crawling bot. Food for thought...
There are plenty of places to get hosted besides mp3.com. I almost started a service myself, but didn't have the bandwidth to do so, or the resources to ship band CDs. However, there are lots of places like mp3.com which will host your music and some will sell cds.
CD Now is starting a program much like mp3.com set to open shortly. CDuctive hosts indie artists. eMusic may be able to help you, but they're pretty big. Live365 will host 365mb worth of mp3s (in 56kbps encoding) and stream them 24/7 for you. Who says it can't be your own stuff.. Cruch Music is for British dance/techno musicians Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) will definetly sign you, for a slight fee, but they can sell your music per track. MusicMatch might sign you WorldWideBands for those musicians around the globe.
For more info, check out a backissue of WIRED magazine, entitled "I Want My MP3". Right now it's a musicians market on the net.
She was quite good as a semi psychotic housewife in Clue, which I'd definetly recommend since it's hillarious. Fans of the movie surely remember her cracking "What's going o-o-n here" line.R.I.P
FirstClass and Hotline are two communities which are still very active. The problem is, these are fading as well, as commercialism (banner ads) and paranoia (somewhat expected) have taken over. They're still great hangouts for early teens, but eventually people "grow up" (that is to say, get a life) and move on.
I think high-volume websites with good stories and features (like Slashdot) are and will continue to be the best BBS-like experiences one can find.
On a somewhat seperate note, the L0pht runs a bbs (telnet to bbs.l0pht.com). If you think about it, today's web portals are much like graphical BBSes--you log in, get your mail, your chat, news, forums, etc. all in one place. BBSes haven't died, they're just hiding in unlikely places.
I just saw a program on PBS last week on microbiology. Scientists from Russia and the Ukraine went in to take soil samples from the Chernobyl area in order to asses the genetic mutations of bacteria which live there. One needs a security pass to enter the 15 or so mile radius around the city.
The radiation levels are still dangerous to the northwest of the exploded reactor, as that was where the winds blew the bulk of the sediments. It seems to me that it is very dangerous still, in terms of personal safety.
It is utterly amazing to me that the article focused on Y2K issues, not health issues. Eastern Europe is considered one of the regions that expects to be hit hardest by date rollover issues, because of the lack of government spending on investigation and fixing of mechanical and computer based operations. Chernobyl reactor #3 is not safe to operate, in my book, if protective suits, security clearance, and geiger counters are required to get near the facility.
Regardless of how many mistakes Corel has made, suing is not the answer. Suing does not make Corel feel very happy about spending dollars developing for a platform that only turns around and hits them with a lawsuit. Instead, try contacting Corel's legal department civilly about the concerns. It'd be a mistake to ruin development for the community.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what prompted Gateway to sell off all the Amiga stuff after buying it? More to the point, one wonders if they made a profit off of the sale, and if they will continue to broker companies. Might be a lucrative niche market for cash heavy companies..
I imagine you guys can actually hire some full-time people to serve as editors and content publishers, and have staging servers--all those lovely things you realize you can have once your website actually has a budget and tons of viewers. You've talked about how there are better ways to write the slash code--in different languages, etc, so will you be hiring programmers or will this roll along as a geeky-open-source-fast-food-underground-zine forever thing? (sorry for overdoing the last bit there :)
thanks
I believe that an Open Content license would be excellent for databases, and I agree that advertising (via banners or text) is an incredibly bad revenue generator, and should not pass for a business plan at all.
.subscriberpaid.consumerreports.com subdomain, which would validate me for the site. (I have no affiliation with them, just using as an example.)
Yahoo makes money by selling targeted advertising and via selected business partnerships. Since they have huge brand name recognition and large traffic, they can afford to do so. EBay makes money as well, because they manage to turn a profit based on the volume and addictive nature of auctions.
Many academic libraries pay (huge) subscription fees to permit per-domain access to such things as the Consumer Reports or L/N databases. Accesses to the databases are limited to a matching sub or top level domain reverse lookup. This seems to work well, and off-site university affiliates can get in remotely via proxy.
My suggestion would be to have a GPL or Open Content license on databases or pay via subscription that would be domain based. So, if I'm Consumer Reports, I will have a web or app client connect to the ns.consumerreports.com nameserver and have it assign my current ip a name in our
While it is one of the first truly unbiased and highly technical articles on the K7 and G4 chips (instead of rumors and performance "benchmark" drivel), it does not say that much about the chips in the end. It should have concluded with a stronger statement about the efficiency of the G4 chip.
The US Govt is often criticized for implementing obscenely expensive solutions to problems when simple ones would have done the job better. This can be applied the the K7 vs G4 question, for it is always better to have efficiency when the performance is the same.
Rumor has it that Intel is running the new Itanium chips currently with 30 watts of power consumption, over twice that of the G4. If I upgraded my motherboard to the itanium (tm), I would have to get a new case or power supply because of the incredible inefficiency of the chip. That is not novel engineering, but sluggish engineering, something which is not prized in this day in age.
Hi Woz, I know that you've done a great deal with teaching youngsters about technology. I volunteer teaching 3rd and 4th graders, and often wonder if I'm going about it the best way. What would you recommend is the best approach to teaching children how to use technology and retain that information?
Many thanks
Wow, wouldn't everyone like to have an exponential salary! Check out his monthly checks:
...6144,12288, 24576, 49152 are the monthly checks for months 9-12. More than I'll ever see.
$24, 48, 96, 192, 384, 768, 1536, 3072
So in other words it takes him 8 months to make enough to really "earn a living". So what does he do except work out of savings for the first 7 months? Ordering all those products has got to rack up.
Should we feel sorry for him? Nope. Here's why...
A grand total if he makes it all year? $95,208. Not bad, but let's remember he only makes $168 in his first 3 months and he'll have no life (or wife!).
Sheesh
These setups have been used in a lot of commercials recently too. The problem is, as always in the film industry, that the setup is much too expensive for small studios to pioneer some amazing things with them. Often it is the independent filmmakers who revolutionize techniques in cinematography, for they aren't afraid to experiment with techniques or styles.
I think we'll be moving more in this direction, in terms of filmmaking production, as well as satellite distribution to theaters. Viewers always wish to be awed, so I don't think this style will be a fad.
I've already bought thirty 200 ft spools. Duct tape is good for creating makeshift shelter, clothing, skiis, food, containers, computers, restraints, shovels, napkins, kleenex, fuel...
;)
I'll be safe no matter what happens!
PS-Duct tape has no date rollovers or timed demos. Major plus.
..because I Anal sounds kinda funny to the under 18 popualation of slashdot ;).
On a serious note, we are not a direct democracy, but a democratic republic. There is a semblance of "one man (person), one vote" in the United States, but we have chosen to implement heirarchy to get things done more quickly than waiting for 200 million Americans to cast their votes on each issue.
Given the precarious state of IP (Intellectual property) laws and patents, it is not always easy to determine what is illegal and what isn't. Programmers do need intermediaries such as lawyers to advise.
Try telling the Federal Marshall that we can "deal with the system ourselves" when he's got the warrant at the front door at some damned inconvenient hour. It is inevitable that end users (citizens) will need tech support (legal counsel) from companies (governments) who designed (authored) certain pieces of code (law) when they're uncertain or confused.
First off, do you believe the fascination the media has had with hackers/crackers is merely a fad and will go away (like Y2k paranoia), or are computers in these times too much of an integral part of society to ignore? Case in point- your local newspaper prints which homes have been robbed in the last week. Isn't it plausible that they'll one day publish which corporations have been compromised?
Two, do you believe hacking can be incorporated? Packet Storm has been bought by Knoll-O'Gara as you know. Is it plausible that previously taboo security information repositories/experts will become obtained/retained by corporations in the future?
many thanks.
1.5 million dollars for a 3 university project? I don't imagine they'll get very far in their research unless they are very, very resourceful. Coming from someone who has a research physicist in the immediate family, 1.5M is on the very low end of the grants scale. I know of some recent biology development grants that have exceeded 1 billion.
.28 microns isn't going to cut it anymore. However, should these developments occur, we would most certainly shatter Moore's "Law" one and for all.
Another issues is the practicality of quantity manufacture should the U of O researchers come up with a chip. Chip manufacturing at
First off, I'd like to say to Jim that I'm very impressed with the descriptions of the technology. However, have a friend redesign the website so that you can sell the idea better to potential investors.
To RISCy--find a company to work for which would like to explore your ideas as a potential product, as opposed to trying to start the business yourself. I would try getting a job as a unix/sys admin (as you've described yourself on your website) with a software company which could develop (what I assume is) the software which you have an idea for.
It is a hell of a lot easier to integrate products into someone else's existing business model than to start up your own. That doesn't mean people try, but it's the truth.
Best of luck to Jim and RISCy in their endeavors--
I'm sure that everyone caught the dissapointment that Todd felt from the community. People got on his back too much, something which I don't believe he expected. If he had wanted to continue, he could have reopened in a relatively small amount of time--say 2 weeks--had the dedication from the community been there.
How is that possible? Donated bandwidth, users sending in next month's fees ahead of time, class action lawsuit--any of these things could have helped. However, evidently users were pissed off and left Todd to stand as a one man mountain to bear the brunt of the sorting out and accusations.
C'mon guys, it's the holidays and we can't even give a little.
I might put on the list one of the creators of ICQ, Hotline, or even AIM, all of which are transforming communications, creating more new kinds of communities in a day than was once possible in years. Or a geneticist who, for better or worse, is slaving away on the Human Genome Project, and is about to unravel the secrets of human life.
Woah there, horsey. ICQ development for multi-OS platforms has been stagnant, to say the least. This is not impressive or redeeming in any way. AIM has been as bad as Amazon vs Barnes recently, pushing Yahoo and Microsoft out using of the AIM protocol to make an alternative client. Hotline's creator, Adam Hinkley, was a 17 year old kid who did change a lot of people's online lives--however the company was ousted from him by some sleazy investors in Canada. He no longer has control of the program, and is being sued in the Australian legal system.
Finally, the man who runs the Human Genome project is a raging capatalist in every sense of the word, a person who believes that his scientific discoveries should be soley his. This raises incredible moral and ethical issues, along the same lines but with more ramifications than the Amazon/LinkSynergy/Doubleclick patenting claims.
IMHO, none of those people deserve the award, completely ignoring the fact that theses technologies had little impact on the world in 1999. How about Kofe Anan or Madeline Albright being nominated for mediating and resolving large international conflicts? Or the Ireland peace process's apparent success? Let's stand back from technology for a moment and realize that no matter how big the net grows, there will be at least 50% of the world which will never surf the internet.
The one thing that having a color lcd would do to confuse the "zen of Palm" would be having two different versions of programs, one color and one monochrome. Hopefully Palm would be able to figure out how to incorporate "old" app support with new color apps.
The second concern of mine, besides the fact that my Palm III will be obsolete, is that currently Palms can run for almost a month on 2 AAA batteries. That is not going to be true for Palms with color screens.
Have we all blocked web ads from our browsers because Doubleclick has patented online advertising? Nope. You have the right to boycott Amazon, however it is rather silly. Yes Amazon should have sued Barnes and Noble instead of patenting, but they shouldn't necessarily be punished for their lawyers' recommendations. There are worse companies than Amazon out there.
I thought this was pretty good.
Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's boxes have conveyed to every radio with the potential to disembowl in the sportscar industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, Amazon.com Inc., Compaq, Time Magazine Inc., and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense mice to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's lucid products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such knaves and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and wives that exhibit the potential to disguise Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly run consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not punch with Microsoft's stapler.
First off, Time has name some real twerps as "Man of the Year", such as Newt Gingrich not so long ago. He served his wife divorce papers when she was dying in the hospital of ovarian cancer. Nice guy right?
As for CmdrTaco, I challenge thee in asking whether you have stopped banner ads on Slashdot because DoubleClick has tried to patent online advertisng. Boycotts of stores with sufficient reason are warranted, and although it is obviously a person decision, I haven't stopped buying from amazon just because their lawyers did something stupid.
Bezos is an innovator and a smart businessman. I'd agree that he might deserve the award this year, seeing as ecommerce sales have tripled this holiday season.
Lastly, the New York Times Sunday 12/19 edition (today) in the Business section has a very interesting piece on why ecommerce players like amazon and eToys lose money on every order.
It has been up to the end user to standardize clients. I use ICQ because my friends do, and I don't use AIM because my friends don't use AOL. They will have a hard time standardizing because messaging clients are by nature proprietary--they want to keep you using their client, much as portals try to keep you from going outside of their website.
AOL probably won't merge AIM with ICQ, because AOL is still using IE even though they bought Netscape. Just because they own Netscape, doesn't mean they've merged it into AOL.
I believe Excite was the first company to come up with this idea, when it was Architext Inc. They used a bit of distributed crawling on Stanford owned Sun boxes in off-hours.
The idea of a client reporting crawling is interesting but I have two issues with it. First, it's essential what is being done with services like AllAdvantage or free ISPs. They may monitor the sites you go to in order to build a database for advertisers, instead of for searching. The second issue is, net surfing would be bogged down considerably unless there was high bandwidth for the project.
One way someone could do this though, is to create an open proxy server on a big pipe, which would log all the sites users went to. This would be voluntary of course, and the database of sites could be added to the findings of a crawling bot.
Food for thought...
There are plenty of places to get hosted besides mp3.com. I almost started a service myself, but didn't have the bandwidth to do so, or the resources to ship band CDs. However, there are lots of places like mp3.com which will host your music and some will sell cds.
CD Now is starting a program much like mp3.com set to open shortly.
CDuctive hosts indie artists.
eMusic may be able to help you, but they're pretty big.
Live365 will host 365mb worth of mp3s (in 56kbps encoding) and stream them 24/7 for you. Who says it can't be your own stuff..
Cruch Music is for British dance/techno musicians
Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) will definetly sign you, for a slight fee, but they can sell your music per track.
MusicMatch might sign you
WorldWideBands for those musicians around the globe.
For more info, check out a backissue of WIRED magazine, entitled "I Want My MP3". Right now it's a musicians market on the net.
She was quite good as a semi psychotic housewife in Clue, which I'd definetly recommend since it's hillarious. Fans of the movie surely remember her cracking "What's going o-o-n here" line.R.I.P
FirstClass and Hotline are two communities which are still very active. The problem is, these are fading as well, as commercialism (banner ads) and paranoia (somewhat expected) have taken over. They're still great hangouts for early teens, but eventually people "grow up" (that is to say, get a life) and move on.
I think high-volume websites with good stories and features (like Slashdot) are and will continue to be the best BBS-like experiences one can find.
On a somewhat seperate note, the L0pht runs a bbs (telnet to bbs.l0pht.com). If you think about it, today's web portals are much like graphical BBSes--you log in, get your mail, your chat, news, forums, etc. all in one place. BBSes haven't died, they're just hiding in unlikely places.
I just saw a program on PBS last week on microbiology. Scientists from Russia and the Ukraine went in to take soil samples from the Chernobyl area in order to asses the genetic mutations of bacteria which live there. One needs a security pass to enter the 15 or so mile radius around the city.
The radiation levels are still dangerous to the northwest of the exploded reactor, as that was where the winds blew the bulk of the sediments. It seems to me that it is very dangerous still, in terms of personal safety.
It is utterly amazing to me that the article focused on Y2K issues, not health issues. Eastern Europe is considered one of the regions that expects to be hit hardest by date rollover issues, because of the lack of government spending on investigation and fixing of mechanical and computer based operations. Chernobyl reactor #3 is not safe to operate, in my book, if protective suits, security clearance, and geiger counters are required to get near the facility.
Regardless of how many mistakes Corel has made, suing is not the answer. Suing does not make Corel feel very happy about spending dollars developing for a platform that only turns around and hits them with a lawsuit. Instead, try contacting Corel's legal department civilly about the concerns. It'd be a mistake to ruin development for the community.