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CokeBear (16811)

CokeBear
  (email not shown publicly)
http://www.aquadan.com/
"As we climbed the ladder of progress, we kicked out the rungs below. There is no going back without catastrophe."

CokeBear (16811)

  Technology: Zeppelins Over California 2008-05-11 04:45

Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 11, @04:45AM
from the oh-the-humanity dept.
It seems that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow may not have been completely off the mark. According to Venture Beat, Airship Ventures has raised capital sufficient to build their first Zeppelin NT (Microsoft Windows reference purely coincidental). The airship will offer rides for up to 12 passengers out of the old Navy Blimp hangars at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley. Airship Ventures notes that airships are already flying safely in Japan and Germany, so now the US will have its chance. Rides will cost from $250 to $500 per person. Esther Dyson is one of the investors.
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 [+] story, tech, transportation, business, hindenburg, ohthehumanity, xkcd

  Science: Helium Crisis Approaching 2008-01-14 09:09

Posted by kdawson on Monday January 14, @09:09AM
from the no-more-squeaky-voices dept.
vrmlguy writes "Within nine years the National Helium Reserve will be depleted, according to an article in Science Daily. It quotes Dr. Lee Sobotka, of Washington University in St. Louis: 'Helium is non-renewable and irreplaceable. Its properties are unique and unlike hydrocarbon fuels (natural gas or oil), there are no biosynthetic ways to make an alternative to helium. All should make better efforts to recycle it.' (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a local article with quotes from Dr. Sobotka and representatives of the balloon industry.) On Earth, Helium is found mixed with natural gas, but few producers capture it. Extracting it from the atmosphere is not cost-effective. The US created a stockpile, the National Helium Reserve, in 1925 for use by military dirigibles, but stopped stockpiling it in 1995 as a cost-saving measure."
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 [+] story, science, usa, helium, !crisis, exaggeration

  Your Rights Online: Is Virtual Rape a Crime? 2007-05-04 12:33

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday May 04 2007, @12:33PM
from the because-/quit-is-so-hard-to-type dept.
cyberianpan writes "Wired is carrying commentary on the story that Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen's allegations of rape in Second Life. For reasons of civil liberty & clarity we'd like to confine criminal law to physical offenses rather than thought crimes but already threats, menace & conspiracy count as crimes. Could we see a situation where our laws extend?"
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 [+] story, yro, internet, haha, hellno, secondlife, dumbass

  Ask Slashdot: New Motherboards Disallowing IDE Booting? 2007-04-16 16:13

Posted by Cliff on Monday April 16 2007, @04:13PM
from the brain-dead-moves dept.
wattsup asks: "It seems that bootable IDE ports are disappearing on newer motherboards. I recently purchased an MSI G965M-FI motherboard for a system upgrade. Overall the board is pretty good with lots of features, but it had one unexpected 'feature' that I didn't know about when I bought it. The PATA100 IDE port won't allow you to install an operating system from an attached CD-ROM. Does anybody know if this is an issue that can be fixed by upgrading the BIOS, or is this hard-wired into the IDE controller?"
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 [+] story, askslashdot, hardhack, os, technology, obsolete, fud

  Linux: Godwin's Law Invoked in Linus/Gnome Spat 2007-02-17 03:21

Posted by Zonk on Saturday February 17 2007, @03:21AM
from the can't-the-nazis-stay-out-of-just-one-internet-argument dept.
lisah writes "The flame wars between Linus Torvalds and the GNOME community continue to burn. Responding to Torvalds' recent claim that GNOME 'seems to be developed by interface Nazis' and that its developers believe their 'users are idiots,' a member of the Linux Foundation's Desktop Architects mailing list suggested that Torvalds use GNOME for a month before making such pronouncements. Torvalds, never one to back down from a challenge, simply turned around and submitted patches to GNOME and then told the list, '...let's see what happens to my patches. I guarantee you that they actually improve the code.' After lobbing that over the fence, Torvalds concluded his comments by saying, 'Now the question is, will people take the patches, or will they keep their heads up their arses and claim that configurability is bad, even when it makes things more logical, and code more readable.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
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 [+] story, linux, gnome, linus, cybernazism, flamebait

  Your Rights Online: Sen. Ted Stevens Introduces "Son of DOPA" 2007-02-15 13:21

Posted by kdawson on Thursday February 15 2007, @01:21PM
from the tubes-tied dept.
DJCacophony writes "Ted 'series of tubes' Stevens has introduced a bill, going by the interim name S.49, that aims to block access to interactive websites from schools and libraries. The wording of the bill is vague enough to apply to Wikipedia, MySpace (and other social networking sites), and potentially even to blogs. The bill is apparently so similar to the failed Deleting Online Predators Act of last year that it has been termed 'Son of DOPA' by some." Stevens introduced S.49, the text of which is not yet available, on the opening day of the legislative session.
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 [+] story, yro, censorship, internet, politics, tubes, thinkofthechildren

  Developers: Google Releases 'Testing on the Toilet' 2007-01-25 20:17

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday January 25 2007, @08:17PM
from the logging-off dept.
JasonK writes "Here's a type of Google launch you don't see every day: Testing on the Toilet. This is a service that has been apparently been running internally for several months and teaching developers about testing during their 'down time,' so to speak. Due to the wild success of the program inside of Google, they decided to start a blog where they will post these weekly episodes so that the rest of us can print them out and have our own reading on the can. Is this a step towards Google becoming more open about their development practices?"
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 [+] story, developers, google, toilet, bathroomhumor, hemorrhoid, programming

  Hardware: 10 Best IT Products Of 2006 2006-12-19 13:53

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday December 19 2006, @01:53PM
from the i-do-so-love-a-top-ten-list dept.
digihome writes "CRN.com chooses the ten best new products of 2006, including the best development tools, server, notebook and storage device. Some of the choices may surprise you ... such as their choice for operating system of the year." From the article: "With Windows Vista, Microsoft has refreshed the user desktop experience. While debate rages over whether the five-year wait was worth it, the truth is Vista is pretty much the only game in town. One may question whether Vista should be bestowed with Product of the Year recognition in the operating system category. But the product unquestionably brings new features and capabilities to solution providers that in turn promise new revenue generation dialogues with end users."
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 [+] story, hardware, advertisement, shill, xmas, it

  Apple: iTunes Sales Not 'Collapsing' After All 2006-12-14 22:15

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday December 14 2006, @10:15PM
from the looking-at-the-bigger-picture dept.
john82 writes "Earlier this month we had a report from Forrester, based on a random sampling of 2,000 credit card accounts, that purported to show that iTunes sales were crashing. Now comes another survey from Reston, VA-based ComScore which indicates the exact opposite. ComScore's report which is based on actual iTunes sales shows a 84% increase during the first nine months of this year compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile the author of the Forrester report, Josh Bernoff, noted in his blog yesterday that they shouldn't be pummeled just because everyone took what he wrote and ran with it."
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 [+] story, apple, media, itunes, haha, noshit, forrester

  Microsoft Kill Off Frontpage 2006-12-09 09:02 GoogTube

Submitted by GoogTube on Saturday December 09 2006, @09:02AM
GoogTube writes "Microsoft frontpage have announced what we have all be hoping for, And that is the death of microsoft frontpage.
After nine years of being an award-winning Web authoring tool, FrontPage will be discontinued in late 2006. We will continue to serve the diverse needs of our existing FrontPage customers with the introduction of two brand-new application building and Web authoring tools using the latest technologies: Office SharePoint Designer 2007 for the enterprise information workers and Expression Web for the professional Web designer.

With personal pages dying out and the average PC user turning to things like blogging it makes sense that Microsoft should ditch thier "web design for average joe" idea and move onto more professional webdesign tools and suites."
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 [+] submission, microsoft
  • Nothing More

  Plone Keynote: Moglen on Social Justice and OSS 2006-12-09 02:09 NewsCloud

Submitted by NewsCloud on Saturday December 09 2006, @02:09AM
NewsCloud writes "What does Firefox have to do with social justice? How will the one laptop per child project discourage genocide? How soon will Microsoft collapse? Watch Eben Moglen's inspiring keynote from the 2006 Plone Conference (Archive.org: mp3 or qt; or YouTube). The video presentation is ordinary, so the mp3 is an equally good format.
If we know that what we are trying to accomplish is the spread of justice and social equality through the universalization of access to knowledge; If we know that what we are trying to do is build an economy of sharing which will rival the economies of ownership at every point where they directly compete; If we know that we are doing this as an alternative to coercive redistribution, that we have a third way in our hands for dealing with long and deep problems of human injustice; If we are conscious of what we have and know what we are trying to accomplish, when this is the moment for the first time in lifetimes, we can get it done.
"
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 [+] submission, software
  • Nothing More

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