Wednesday, February 22, 2006

The Trouble With Slashdot

I normally love Slashdot for bringing to the fore interesting stories I would have never heard about otherwise. Despite the collective kvetching (much of it deserved, by the way) about numerous dupes in the story feed, the bottom line is that the site provides a much-needed filter on the huge volume of tech news. It's arbitrary, sure, but it's also useful.

That is, I had that opinion until I read this article about a supposed "self-contained power source" which fits the definition of a perpetual motion machine. My first reaction to this was... what the hell? And then when I found out that the contributor McOSEN was from the lunatic fringe, conspiracy-theory-believin' Open Source Energy website, that's when I lost it. What the hell, Roblimo? Can you no longer get editors capable of discerning between science and rank nutjobbery? F'r chrissakes, they take the zero-point energy loons seriously! This is not an accident, although this particular transgression has to rank as one of the worst of their most recent. It's well past time to clean house over there; who should do it?