We should have Watson fact-check Slashdot story submissions.

If you were born in the late 70's, are reading this article, and like fiction, consider reading Ready: Player One.

It's founded on the same premise -- video games become the metaverse. But what if that metaverse was written by Richard Garriott? And cost just one quarter to play? I read it, and just loved it. Even my 10 year old daughter loved it!

Reminds me of this YouTube video -- Eye-Tracking To Improve Camera Motion And Depth-Of-Field.

I can see the limitations in a theater -- only one setting can be used by all people. But in a single person's experience, it has been made to work -- you can focus dynamically based on what the person is looking at.

del.icio.us is one of the best research tools on the Internet, -- especially for keeping abreast of innovations in the programming world.

It works like this:

You're working on text processing in Python, or something. So you search delicious for "python" and "textprocessing."

You go through the results, most of which are fairly generic.

But when you find something interesting -- you don't stop there: You ask, "Who was this person who thought this was interesting?"

Then you look at *that person's* tags under "Python". Do they look interesting? That is: Is this person looking for things that are interesting and relevant to you? They aren't bookmarking the ordinary mainstream things, that is.

Then you add that person to your *network.* Get a group of about 10 interesting individuals into the network.

Then search for "python" and "python textprocessing" in that network -- and now you start to get very, very interesting results, consistently.

Yes, but have you forgotten Isaac Asimov's corollary?

"When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion -- the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right".

And it's not just "...quick to accept something they read as true," -- it's also quickness to accept controversy as legitimate doubt.

Consider: "Someone can make an argument that sounds good against evolution, therefor I don't know, and you don't know either."

Good god, then it's even WORSE!

For an example, check out these numnuts.

There is no "rationalism," there are only imaginations of rationalism -- and those imaginations are generally pretty poor stuff for the soul.

The idea is that if you look and act like a smug selfish conniving snivling jerk that spends his (and it's generally his) time coming up with mathematical theologies of social networks and bayesian systems, that you're somehow more "rational." Dios, it's gross.

Seriously here, though:

The problem is the ends. Rationality can never be for just itself; Rationality is always towards some purpose. And what purpose would one orient their rationality to? Well, a lot of people think that money and power are the ultimate purposes, so they judge themselves and others by how far they get in this "rational" persuit. Then there are other people who say, "Well, actually, the goal is some equitable distribution of power and influence (and what have you,)" and so there you end up with liberal philosophies or efforts to make the middle class swell or what have you.

Would-be "Rationalists" need to identify what they live for, which will not in-itself be a "rational" thing. It won't defy reason or logic or what have you, but it won't be derivable or even based in reason or logic. It'll be an imaginary thing, or an imaginary society, or an imaginary world, or an imaginary person, most likely -- but an imaginary thing worth loving.

The athiests I know all have comic books in their back pockets. They should just fess up where their hearts are, rather than hiding behind the facad of "rationality."

"Linked data is data you can click on. It will take you to another data set."

I've thought since early 2000's that our data structures (like JSON) need the concept of a pointer. What would it look like? A URL, of course -- a URL pointing to yet more JSON data.

{"name": "Lion Kimbro", "favorite color": "yellow", "homepage": "http://www.speakeasy.org/~lion/", "friends": [http://example.org/joel, http://example.org/whit, http://example.org/phil, http://example.org/amber%5D}

The idea here being that you have API support to dereference, say, friends[0], when you make use of it. The data is pulled and connected up with the local memory system when it's used.

First: Look up Forest Mims III and research his life story and the things he tells people. He is totally encouraging. Don't let his creationist thinking scare you. (I'm not a creationist either, but if you want to learn things in the world, you have to be able to work with difference.)

Second: Unless you're a natural, you're going to need some personal (re-)training, most likely, about how to think about acting, creativity, invention, business, and so on; Be on the lookout for it. Investigate different scenes to find personal contacts, research, and perpetually experiment. You can totally do this, but you'll want someone who can answer your questions and make a personal connection with you, an emotional connection.

Third: Not directly what you're going for, but perhaps something you might want to consider -- forming or joining a society for performing such work? Research Bucketworks for an example. There's a group doing DIY/DIWO bio lab research in the LA area. In Seattle, there is Jigsaw Renaissance. There are lots of more special purposed groups as well out there.

You're always welcome at Jigsaw Renaissance!

We're a multidisciplinary space on 1026 Madison Street, 1st Hill (Capitol Hill.) We're filling out our calendar right now, so if you want to offer a class or hold an event, we invite you to do so freely (no cost.)

Also, there's open house every Saturday. We have a lot of tools for woodworking, are expanding our visual arts right now, and will be adding a kitchen, metalworking, and more computers later. Projector present, and a giant wall for projecting on to. Read our vision and mission statements to learn what we're about.

Call me 206.427.2545, or call Jigsaw Renaissance per the website. I'd love to meet for lunch on your terms, independent of whether you decide to use our space or not.

I was thinking more like Pope Leo X, who famously said: "Since God has given us the Papacy, let us enjoy it."

He was a fun loving guy, gave tons of money away to the sick and to the poor, loved the arts and people of learning. He restored universities, gave more money to teachers, and on and on.

There's a lot of negative things that could be said about him, but for some reason I have a difficult time calling them to mind.

Raj Patel might want to consult the wisdom of Winston, after having consulted the wisdom of Brian.

So, in effect instead of having a copy that doesn't have stupid digital restrictions the day it is released you will have it a week after its released.

But that's exactly the aim. This is about making money.

Game publishers buy protection by the week.

Here's how it works:

Game development houses, generally, do not write their own copyright protection systems -- that's not their expertise! They just work on making a good game.

As the game nears release, they shop around for companies that write protection systems. How are they priced?

The protection companies say, "Well, for $N,000, we can implement protection scheme X1, which should keep you protected from crackers for about 2 weeks. But for $N0,000, we can implement protection scheme X2, which should keep you protected from crackers for about 6 weeks." They know roughly how much time it takes, because they have prior experience.

The publisher asks itself, "How many copies are we selling between week 2 and week 6?" The bulk of a games' profit is made in the first 1-4 months, so however much time they can buy, that's money in the pocket.

The real analog hole is the display screen.

With all the camera and video technologies coming out, I wouldn't be surprised if creating an exact digital replica in the future was as simple as putting a camera in front of a screen and loading in a "record video on a screen" app.

Play the movie once, (perhaps even at a higher speed,) and you have a perfect copy of the video.

Sound might be a bit trickier.

I find Taoism lacking, often; For example, I have never heard of a working civilization that based its thought in Taoism. Nonetheless, the fact of its wisdom is undeniable.

Tao Te Ching 18

        When the great Tao is declined,
        The doctrines of humanity (jen) and righteousness (yi) arose,
        When knowledge and wisdom appeared,
        There emerged great hypocrisy.
        When the six family relationships are not in harmony,
        There will be the advocacy of filial piety and deep love to children.
        When a country is in disorder,
        There will be praise of loyal ministers.

So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews?

Yes, it's OK.