It seems right that since I announced the BBS Documentary production on Slashdot, I should also take the time to give testimony to one of its primary interviewees that took it from side fun project to meaningful historical work.

My goal had been to do a documentary on the BBS Experience, working from interviews with flexible friends and nearby folks, and then work up to the "Big Ones", the names who had been in my teenage mind when I ran a BBS, like Ward Christensen, Chuck Forsberg, Randy Suess, and others. But then I had someone from Chicago checking in to make sure I wasn't going to skip over the important parts the midwest had told in the story. So it was that a month into production, barely nailing down how I would fly post 9/11 with a studio worth of equipment, that I found myself at CACHE (Chicago Area Computer Hobbyist Exchange) and meeting Ward himself.

They say "Never meet your heroes." I think it's more accurate to say "Have the best heroes" or "Be the kind of person a hero would want to meet." Ward was warm, friendly, humble, and very, VERY accomodating to a first-time filmmaker. I appreciated, fundamentally, the boost that he gave me and my work, knowing I was sitting on hours of footage from The Guy.

There were many other The Guy and The Lady and The Groups for BBS: The Documentary, but Ward's humble-ness about his creation and what it did to the world was what made sure I never overhyped or added layers of drama on the work. Ward was amazing and I'll miss him.

They forgot to count politicians.

Ooops, instead of P=NP it was OU=O?

This is what happens when you couple a glorified home-page displayer with an ad-delivery-oriented touring-complete language, and call it a development environment. It's a wonder that Google hasn't done worse, I praise their engineers.

Keeping the old console-wars alive, eh? (I read some old Usenet archives - people were arguing over Nintendo vs. Sega back then.)

Nintendo did this before everyone else, with the Virtual Boy.

Actually Wal-Mart appears to be less interested in data-mining you than are big grocers like Kroger, Ralph's, Safeway etc. You don't need a loyalty card to get Wal-Mart's best prices on groceries.

While Wal-Mart could theoretically match your purchases with your debit card data, and maybe they do, you're welcome to pay cash and be anonymous. Compare with the many grocery chains that require you to pay a significant premium for anonymity (i.e. they require the use of loyalty cards to get anywhere near reasonable prices).

Like most Intel features AMD has the same thing in their chips, PSP they call it. "platform security processor", it peforms exactly the same function as IME, and happens to also use a seperate CPU just like Intel does for it.

This is how you play multiple vinyl records: You use a record-changing turntable.

1. Stack a bunch of records on top of one another on the spindle.
2. When a record finishes, the next record will drop down on top of the record(s) already on the turntable.
3. This is good for 80-100 minutes of music depending on the number of stacked records supported by the device.

No need for expensive cleaning cloths or solutions as long as you are able to buy more copies of your records.

Not true that the panel is "totally filled with executive types." One of them is an executive's wife.

The record companies also shook down the producers of the 2008 film, The Wrecking Crew, a documentary about a very few, unknown, session musicians who played on innumerable hit records from the 1950s and 1960s. The release of the film was delayed for over two years -- until the companies were paid, in essence, for the use of the artists' own performances.

There's a lot of buffoons in that category, sadly.

Not much. Personally, I'm embarrassed in general with the state of relations between Netanyahu and Obama. I guess it's too late to hope that one side will take the high road.

Speaking as someone Jewish here, let me say this is just plain embarrassing - but I guess it's something to be expected when the Israeli government made, Netanyahu's previous cabinet, a frothy-mouthed extremist its face to the world as Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

The large number of replies to the parent indicate there are any number of folks on Slashdot who don't realize that no true pressure cookers have glass tops: The glass would break under the pressure. Duuh.

More to the point, do we know that the US Capitol Police didn't make the same mistake, and blew up somebody's crockpot?