It would be a service even if it's during the week-long boycott and convinces Dice to be serious about backpedaling and engaging with the community. Not sure how you could fund something like that. It would be great if you could join the ##altslashdot IRC channel for some realtime discussion of collaboration possibilities.

...for those who know how to use IRC.

For those who know how to use an IRC client go to #slashdot-refugees on FreeNode. If you don't, use this handy web client and join anyway. :) Commiserate and/or make plans in case this situation goes horribly wrong. :-/

Actually... I've created a channel on IRC called #slashdot-refugees (on FreeNode... there's even a web client. Some in the community might want to commiserate, discuss plans of keeping the community together into the future etc.. and a realtime medium might be a good way. It's 2am in Australia though, so although I'm in channel I won't be around for a few hours.

That's it really... where would we go? Slashdot isn't the site it's the community. There has been OSS work on federated search, and federated social networking, but a federated discussion site with a decent moderation system would be nice right about now. Is it even a solvable problem?

The question : what can replace it if/when this is required? This episode is making me wish I'd been keeping up with the federated technologies people have been experimenting with - a federated nerd community that somehow included moderation wouldn't make me cry. It's strange but I've actually returned to IRC after 15 years - the dev communities I'm interested in have channels on FreeNode, and it's one of the only other truly nerd-friendly hangouts left.

I think someone suddenly got Dear Leaders attention when they mentioned "walled garden". If he'd been paying attention from the beginning he'd know it applies more to iThings, but...

...and we all know the vastly less powerful are equally morally culpable. That's why bombing illiterate goat herding religious nuts is also universally accepted as the epitome of Great Justice. Just replace "angry citizen" in this analogy... how could anyone fail to see?

I guess there are pluses and minuses to the technology they're using. They get no pixelated "screen door" effect, but can do less about the persistent image problem. I read something about tricks with narrowing of colour pulses, and some other things they could attempt. I'm not sure if they've even demoed the VR overlay yet, so perhaps they're still hashing it out.

The specs are pretty decent and probably exceed your expectations.

The castAR glasses also have an overlay which make use of the projector for more traditional VR.

OK. It's even semi-relevant. Jeri Ellsworth is about to release a 3D VR/AR project that I think is WAY more exciting than Oculus, and it's completely novel (or at least I haven't seen anything like it). The glasses project an image out onto the world so 3D objects are "in" the real world - the beginnings of a holodeck-like technology. It's called castAR... check it out on YouTube, but you can tell from peoples impressions it's a genuinely fresh experience, not just 3D done over with new tech.

OK, so I should be worried about the mercury and not the lead, cadmium etc... Got it.

Doh... premise of the COMMENTS

Mod up... Part of what is so refreshing about F/OSS is that it's self directed by passionate people. There's something obviously wrong with the premise of the article. If patrons are the real source of vitality in Linux and F/OSS why are the most successful distros clustered around Debian and not Redhat?