Freak Nation News

Freak News

• posted 07/08/2008General News
  Hans Reiser Abandons Innocence Claims, Leads Police To Grave
  Abandoning his claims of innocence, computer scientist Hans Reiser led police to a shallow grave containing the remains of his wife, Nina. Throughout his trial, Reiser had maintained that he was innocent, using a “misunderstood geek” tactic that sometimes strained credulity. Reiser’s attorney says he now wants “to put some resolution to the whole thing and improve his posture with the case and bring closure to the family”. Reiser is scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow. He was previously best known as the creator of the ReiserFS file system, one of many file systems for Linux.
• posted 07/06/2008General News
  “Bisexual” Dating Site Ejects Transgender Customer
  Prominent bisexual dating and personals site BiDatingNow.com recently deleted the account of an openly transgender site member,stating “as a transgender, our site would not meet your needs. I am afraid we have to remove your profile”. The site is owned by TangoWire, a general dating-site operator whose sites range from gay and lesbian sites to motorcycle riders and ethnic affinity groups. TangoWire personnel reiterate that “transgender is not one of the options we provide, and we don’t provide that as such”, but would not give a reason for the exclusion.
• posted 07/04/2008Science News
  Punk Robots Pogo For Science
  A group of scientists and artists working together have built a trio of robots that recognize punk music and respond to it by pogoing. According to one of the project’s scientists, each robot’s brain (consisting of a neural net) “was played lots of punk, reggae, disco and classical and over a period of time the robot has learned to recognise and appreciate the patterns of sound in punk music”. The robots, adorned with spike-laden leather straps, anarchy signs, Union Jacks, and punk band logos, stay in one place on the dance floor, simply pogoing up and down. The linked BBC story includes video of the robots in action at a series of punk gigs at the Institute for Contemporary Arts — a situation one scientist describes as: “real-time signal processing and robotic control in a fairly hostile environment — in a mosh pit with lots of sweaty punks.”
• posted 06/30/2008General News
  Don S. Davis Dead At Age 65
  Actor Don S. Davis, best known as Stargate SG-1’s General Hammond, has died of a heart attack following a prolonged illness. Davis, a native of Aurora, Missouri, was 65 years old. Having served in the United States Army during the 1960s, he was no stranger to military roles, including Twin Peaks’ Major Garland Briggs. Davis also had a second career as an artist.
• posted 06/28/2008TV/Movie/DVD News
  Dark Knight Tickets Selling Out Already
  Wired and Fandango warn that action, comic, and Heath Ledger fans are already snapping up tickets to early showings of The Dark Knight, the second movie in the new, rebooted Batman franchise. Directed by Christopher (“Memento”, “The Prestige”) Nolan, the movie is Heath (“Brokeback Mountain”) Ledger’s last film before his recent death from a drug overdose. In addition, one box office analyst points out that “This movie comes in riding a wave of hype [Batman Begins] didn’t”. The movie is scheduled to premiere on July 17th.
• posted 06/01/2007Editorial
  Atheists “Versus” Believers?
  The atheists, the rationalists, and the Brights are pissed off, and they’re fighting back against the forces of “Intelligent Design”, public prayer, and superstition. But they’re in real danger of going too far, and the freak community itself could easily become fragmented over issues of faith and belief. Skeptics and mystics can easily remain allies, if they realize that the important thing isn’t what you believe, but what you think should happen to people who disagree with you. An editorial by FN Webmaster Kai MacTane.
• posted 12/14/2006Editorial
  “FUD” Has Become Meaningless
  Once, the term “FUD” actually meant “disinformation used as a competitive weapon.” But legions of open-source partisans and programming-language fanboys have mangled the term out of all recognition, until it’s become a completely meaningless snarl word. It’s time we let this word die a merciful death, and instead use language that actually means something. An editorial by FN Webmaster Kai MacTane.
• posted 09/16/2006Editorial
  What Happened In Montreal
  As a gamer, and a goth, Kimveer Gill may have been a freak. But when he walked into Dawson College three days ago and became “Trench, the Angel of Death”, he was not behaving as a freak. Instead, he was sinking to the level of an animal. Freak Nation Webmaster Kai MacTane opines on Gill’s failure in this editorial — the Freak Nation response to the Montreal tragedy.
• posted 04/24/2006Editorial
  Just Let It Die, Already!
  Paramount has announced, with great fanfare, that it’s selected Armageddon co-writer and now MI-3 director J.J. Abrams to direct Star Trek XI — and that the movie will star younger versions of Kirk and Spock in their days at Starfleet Academy. Freak Nation webmaster Kai MacTane responds: Why don’t they simply shoot the franchise and put it out of our misery? It’s time to let it die, already, and if Paramount won’t do the job, then it’s up to us.
• posted 03/12/2006Editorial
  Making Numbers Lie for Jesus
  Creationists and the Religious Right (and their thinly-disguised allies, the “Intelligent Design supporters”) are trumpeting the results of a recent Zogby poll claiming that Americans “Overwhelmingly Support Teaching Both Sides of Evolution”. But it’s really just sound and fury, covering the emptiness of their position. Kai MacTane points out the bias in the poll questions, and shows why the results really aren’t that horrible.
• posted 02/20/2006Editorial
  The Great Firewall vs. The DMCA
  How can the US Congress criticize tech firms for cooperating with the Chinese government, when the US Department of Justice is sending them subpoenas asking for their help in reviving COPA, a censorship bill that’s already been struck down by the Supreme Court?
• posted 02/15/2006Editorial
  Dressing Up For Freedom
  Recently a noted political figure was removed from the State of the Union address for wearing a t-shirt in the gallery of Congress. But when the civil rights movement protested in Selma, Alabama, they wore suits and ties — even in the heat of the Deep South. Maybe if we dressed better at our modern political events, our messages might get taken more seriously.
• posted 06/13/2005Editorial
  Browser Wars of the Worst Kind
  When Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation’s Asa Dotzler entered their recent online fracas over who was the actual recipient of a PC World magazine award, the losers weren’t just Opera, Mozilla and Firefox. Web standards and open-source software in general will also take part of the hit.
• posted 02/24/2004Editorial
  How Far Will They Go?
  California’s Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, foresees “riots”, “protests”, and “people clashing” if San Francisco’s same-sex marriages are allowed to continue. Would conservatives really go that far to try to stop marriages?
• posted 02/03/2004Editorial
  No Excuse for Environmental Destruction
  In the wake of new UK research showing that the Earth’s environment can recover from episodes of global warming, we’re likely to see Bush Administration pro-industry statements that there’s no need to rein in production of greenhouse gases. But would an environmental correction really solve our problems?