As even Shakespeare knew, 'Tis true; there's magic in the web . . .', something that was proved in the most unlikely of places, the flame-filled forums of Slashdot during this past week. Slashdot founder Rob Malda, better known to millions as Cmdrtaco, chose Valentine's Day to propose to his long-time girlfriend, Kathleen Fent. No doubt millions of people have done the same. But Mr Malda found a rather more original approach than the dull old analogue, down-on-your-knees method. He posted his proposal on Slashdot (the man's bad spelling is infamous). 'Kathleen, I wanted to do this in this most potentially embarassing way possible, and I figured doing it here and now, in front of a quarter of a million strangers, was as good a way as any. I love you more then I can describe within the limits of this tiny little story. We've been together for many years now, and I've known for most of that time that I wanted to spend my life with you. Enough rambling. Will you marry me?' Before Ms Fent had a chance to respond, Slashdot regulars were on to the case and the bad puns flew like Microsoft diatribes at LinuxWorld - 'It's only a token ring'; 'If you two get married, will you be all proprietary towards her, or will she be open-source?'; 'Once you get married, all your base are belong to her [sic]'; 'Will we be seeing child processes anytime soon?'; 'Congrats, you've now spawned a permanent process.' Just 15 minutes later, Ms Fent made Internet history by posting her acceptance, the first post she has made to the site since she helped Mr Malda design it five years ago. 'Many other females might prefer the 'traditional' method of proposing, but I liked this way best,' she wrote in her second post. 'Besides, I think it takes more guts to propose in front of all the flamers, don't you?' While the average Slashdot thread generates two or three hundred replies, by the next day Cmdrtaco's request had drawn 2,000, many of whom rushed off and found Ms Fent's home page. 'I know a lot of people take the topics on Slashdot personally, but this is ridiculous!' she wrote. There is no love like geek love. Among the thousands of follow-ups to Rob Malda's proposal came this story of geek love. It seems a poster named Jaeger took his intended visit to a romantic spot in the wilds of Oregon. Naturally, the couple took their Handspring Visors with them. 'We hiked to the top of the waterfall, overlooking the Columbia River, and I broke out my Visor and scribbled 'Kiesa, I love you and I want to share the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me? - Jaeger'. I handed her unit to her and beamed the memo. She read it and I repeated my query verbally. She pulled out her stylus and started writing something. Even though I was fairly certain she would say yes, waiting for her to respond was still the longest 15 seconds of my life.' On Friday night, Sony sent out a press release announcing its latest line of desktops, which it said aimed 'to place an Emmy on every desk in America'. 'Do you have an Emmy on your desk? If not, today Sony's new E series of computer displays with Emmy-award-winning technology can put one there,' Sony gushed. Sony apparently was overjoyed with the idea. Last week may have been Lunar New Year, but did it think sending us 88 copies would be lucky?
