How long has it been since I visited slashdot.org? This post when I returned from vacation is the latest entry I can find referring to it, so I wouldn't be surprised if its been about that long. In all honesty, I sorta forgot it existed. I was always aware of it, but the only times I ever thought "I wonder whats on /." was when I was far away from any computer.
Today however I was motivated to check it out when Colby Cosh made a coding error, failing to include a link on the last entry of a world press roundup: "Sony's Japanese price point for the PlayStation 3 turns out to be too high at 2× the XBox 360 and the Wii".
So naturally I check slashdot. I find this entry: Low-End PS3 Comes with HDMI, Cheaper in Japan. Also available in the PS3 library is a look inside the PS3, a look at the problems with the PS3, and that finally later this month Sony willactually start building PS3 machines to fulfill their promise of 1 million machines in 2006. Sounds like the Xbox360 difficulties tripled (and the cost doubled, Cosh reminds us).
Also found on slashdot:
- Debian 4.0 ("etch") is hoping to be released in December if a controversial funding proposal comes through
- After almost 40 years of loyal service, parts shortages and replacement combat fighters, the last F-14 Tomcats will be retired.
- No idea if it will go the "Clerks" route, but Spaceballs is set to become an animated series airing on US cable in 2007
- Business students are the most likely grad students to cheat says researchers. 56% admitted to plagurism, while only 49% of law students did. Not sure about the certainty of this: it was a common warning when I was at the University of Alberta that you did not study in the Law Library, or if you did you watched your belongings at all times. Apparently Law was such a competitive field and the students so unscrupulous that they would steal textbooks from people studying in that library in the hope that they were going to negatively impact the GPA of one of their competitors. Reportedly they would even swipe them from under your chair as you were busy studying (or sleeping, in my case I suppose). I always studied in the Cameron Library basement or in Cameron itself: I sometimes would leave all of my belongings for several hours and never find them missing. Just lucky, maybe.
- Famed mathematician Dr. Shing-Tung Yau is furious at A Beautiful Mind author Sylvia Nasar for "defaming" him in a letter she and another person wrote for the New Yorker magazine. You can also see slashdot's original coverage of the letter.
- Microsoft just made online music even less desirable, with Media Player 11 removing the ability to even move music from one machine to another (say if you change computers or use a laptop).
- The creator of the "Columbine RPG" game discusses claims that his game was the lynchpin behind the Dawson School shootings in Montreal.
- Finally, artifical volcanoes could be used to slow "global warming". Question: Didn't volcanic eruptions used to be accused of speeding it up? Seems to me that was used against me on Usenet ages ago. Who's laughing now?
