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| Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com. |
| Geeks declare war on Intel |
| 1:46:13 am mst / 2 March 2001 found by paul / filed in business / source Salon 225 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| From the article: "Chip-heads say flaws in the Pentium 4 prove the high-tech giant is sacrificing engineering principles for marketing goals." |
| I never cared much for the Blue Man Group ads anyways... |
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| Australia goes stark raving mad over Net censorship |
| 8:14:06 am mst / 2 March 2001 found by paul / filed in legal / source Register 62 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| From the article: "The South Australia Parliament is pushing an Internet censorship bill that will make it an offence for anyone to post any information deemed offensive to children anywhere on the Internet. And it's the police that get to decide what is and isn't offensive... The basic premise of the legislation appears to be that since kids are able to access Internet sites at any time, then everything on the Internet ought to be acceptable to children. This is clearly bonkers..." |
| So much for Australia's reputation as a free-wheeling rough-and-ready Crocodile Dundee-loving version of the Wild West. |
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| Where is the next Einstein? |
| 10:25:36 am mst / 2 March 2001 found by paul / filed in science / source The Times 84 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| A group of well-respected scientists have written a letter criticizing the current peer review system for stifling the propogation of brilliant ideas typically discovered by lone geniuses. Not surprisingly, their letter was rejected by the journals Science and Nature, bastions of the peer review system. |
| Peer review is admittedly an imperfect system. However, I don't know if any other formal system would be much better at separating unconventional-but-true ideas from crackpot theories. Perhaps the best would be a decentralized system of peer review, much as goes on currently online in the open source movement. |
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| Hacker Gets Hold of Top Secret U.S. Space Codes |
| 11:47:54 am mst / 2 March 2001 found by paul / filed in security / source Reuters News 72 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| From the article: "An unidentified computer hacker has got hold of top secret U.S. computer system codes for guiding space ships, rockets and satellites, a lawyer in Sweden said on Friday." |
| If he learns our command prefix codes, he'll be able to lower the shields on our starships! |
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| No pirate's life for me |
| 12:48:53 pm mst / 2 March 2001 found by diana / filed in digital media / source ZDNet 50 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| Connie Guglielmo laments the lack of non-pirated digital music available on the internet, as well as a smattering of other net-music problems. |
| Although I too would love to see a decent digital music service, too many of the arguments in this article seem jumbled, confused, or just silly, such as her lack of objection to paying again and again for property she already owns. |
| read 1 comment |
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| Bill Gates declares house is too small |
| 2:45:15 pm mst / 2 March 2001 found by paul / filed in culture / source CNet 132 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Techdirt pointed us towards this amusing story on CNet. Apparently, Bill Gates has decided that his 66,000 square foot house is too small. He is seeking permission from the local government to expand his house since "the home was designed for a bachelor" rather than for a family. (One rumor is that he and his wife are expecting their third child, but Gates had no official comment.) |
| Take the virtual tour of his house here! |
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| Allchin Says Seattle Quake Caused by Open Source |
| 5:59:57 pm mst / 2 March 2001 found by diana / filed in humor / source BBspot 92 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| From the article: The recent earthquake in Seattle caused massive damage and according to Windows OS chief Jim Allchin it is a direct result of the Open Source movement. "This earthquake demonstrates the destabilizing force that Linux and the Open Source software movement has on the earth. If people continue to support this type of software then natural disasters such as this earthquake will continue to occur," said Allchin. |
| No wonder California has so many earthquakes! |
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| Krishna, That Wacky Game Hero |
| 6:21:29 pm mst / 2 March 2001 found by paul / filed in games / source Wired 41 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| The California company PurpleDrop is hoping to tap into the huge Indian computer gaming market by developing games in which the main player characters are Hindu gods. Some are concerned that the "borderline blaspheming (of) sacred Hindu religious tales" might be a bad marketing strategy. |
| Funniest quote: "The reason they don't have Jesus ... in any (American video) game is because of the idea that nobody should be able to kill Jesus -- even in a game". Even though I personally wouldn't mind playing Jesus in a first-person-Messiah videogame, I suspect that isn't the only reason the concept hasn't taken off. |
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