I am local (across the bay) and I can tell you that the Salesforce Tower sticks out like a sore thumb. Arrogant egotistic overkill. I have not met anyone that likes the way it transforms the look of beautiful San Francisco. SF used to have a very strong preservationist city hall; I guess the last decade or two have seen them become hypnotized by the tech money. Too bad, that ugly thing is there to stay. And the light show ("art" ha ha) at the top is going be pouring salt on the wound. Creepy.

Slashdot is probably the only site I visit every day and at least read every headline. The new design is terrible for all the reasons already posted. I expect I'll drop /. if you make this change...the current site has it's problems but the revision is awful.

I never would have thought that slashdot would sink to this. Geez, disappointing. If you keep this up, sayonara. No wonder taco boogied.

I'm not going to read the article. What does srussia mean by "the shift" which is in the last sentance? She created a controversial shift while head of darpa? Those exotic programs which are mentioned in the article ought to take a lot longer than 3 years to manifest, so weren't they already in motion when she took over?

Thank you! That does look like it could be the right book. I'll reread it and see what it's like now.

I tried to research this book before via google but couldn't get a fix on it. When I saw this topic on /. it seemed possible that someone would know.

When I first posted as AC I didn't see it show in comment so I posted with my login. On my original post someone kindly suggested "Time of the Great Freeze" by Silverburg. It does look about right...I'm going to read it and find out. As a kid that was a world that was close enough to touch.

Does anyone recall a book from the 60s or so where a young guy leaves his glacier-buried city to explore the surface world for the first time in centuries? As a kid it was a great story but I can't recall the name or author. My prev posts are hidden for some reason.

That's a really useful explanation of the scope and purpose ...thanks.

I guess I don't see what the thrill is, exactly. If it's main function is to provide a single interface to 'channels', and I would still have to suffer through endless credit card commercials, then...sigh. Thanks for the input though.

I have zilch experience with boxee but did spend some time on it's site a couple of weeks ago to see if it might be of utility when viewing tv shows or movies online. For the life of me I could not figure out what its supposed to do 'for me'. The boxee website is a great example of what happens when they people involved are so deeply entrenched in whatever realm boxee is that they have no clue how to communicate to 'regular' people.

A site like hulu is easy to figure out. But it's got too many commercials and they seem to be adding more all the time. Boxee...someone tell me what it's good for? Like you were explaining to someone who didn't know already???

Is zentrack still going anywhere? The demo is offline, most of the documentation web pages are broken, the forums are very inactive. You can't really tell anything about it unless you install it. zentrack sounds good, but they're doing a terrible job of presenting whatever it is they have to offer.