Slashback: Drivers, Bodycomputing, Farscape

Slashback with news on ATI drivers for non-ATI branded cards, the viewer-led movement to save Farscape, wearable computing from MIT, text-to-facial-expression software, and more. Read on for the details

Maybe customer service isn't dead. On November 28th, we posted a report that OEM cards using ATI chips had trouble with the official drivers from ATI. Terry Makedon (Senior Product Manager, Software for ATI Technologies) writes "Last week we posted a set of unified Linux drivers. These drivers were only loading up on 'Built by ATI' cards. Through our various feedback mechanisms we have determined that there is a large community of 'Powered by ATI' Linux users that did not benefit from our Linux drivers. At this point we are happy to announce an update to our Linux driver (ver. 2.5.1) which will work on both 'Powered by' and 'Built by.' ATI's driver and software strategy is firmly based on responsiveness and we greatly appreciate the feedback our Linux users have provided. Please use http://apps.ati.com/linuxDfeedback/ for a direct feedback line to ATI.

Thanks again for the feedback."

But what if we put the show into this Interdimensional Fungubulon, and then jumped through this here "wormhole"? xagon7 writes "David Kemper, the producer/writer of Farscape, mentioned that it would be theoretically and legally possible for a group to set up a non-profit organization for fans to donate money to, in order to finance an episode and make Farscape all that much tastier to Sci-Fi for the 5th season. They have done just that. They have $200,000 worth of pledges and only need $800,000 total....I hope this gets Slashdotted. Read the story here and you can pledge here."

You're getting less happy to see me? man_of_mr_e writes "Check out MIThril, the next generation research platform for context aware wearable computing. It's been about 18 months since this was last talked about here on Slashdot, and it's kind of cool to see how far the technology has come since then. For those that aren't aware of what it is, it's essentially a project to prototype human wearable computers, complete with schematics, pictures, and a cvs repository for software. Now you too can be like that guy in the IBM commercials trading stock while feeding the pigeons."

Flattening the slope to entry. Catskul writes "You don't need the libwine hack, mentioned in the previous news entry. Just follow the New QT Howto, download the codecs and start MPlayer."

Don't look at me in that tone of voice! 1010011010 writes "On Nov. 26, you ran a story on SpeechView, 'software that translates the voice on the other side of the line into a three dimensional animated face on the computer.' The North Carolina State University Department of Computer Science's 'Voice IO Group' is also working on that problem. Their software looks like it might be better. Read about it here. Includes quicktime movies of the results."

Victory, or a reprieve? A non moose cow writes "Just noticed that a couple of my favorite "Killed by the RIAA" webcast stations are back... like Soma-FM and Monkey Radio (get the streams at Shoutcast). The saving grace came via the recent passage of HR5469 [PDF] by the US Legislature. Thank you to all that sent letters and/or money to fix this problem. If you have been yearning for the resurrection of your favorite stream, go check, it might be back. If you would like to trace the chronology of this mess, check out the Soma-FM news page."

Comments

Re:Egg Troll has $800,000

[jandrese]

Yes, that's the show I want brought back on the Spice channel. The whole damn show was a tease.

Re:1st post

[El]

Since EVERY article appears to get several "first posts", I would consider ANY of them very "redundant". And does it really matter WHY a post was modded down? Any modding down is effectively because the moderator thinks the poster is an idiot; which category of idiot is an afterthought.

They need fishing poles instead of fish

[Wee]

$1,000,000 is an awful lot of money, and the first thing that came to mind is that an amount like that could feed a fair number of mouths

Until the money ran out and the mouths got hungry again, the needy wouldn't need as much. You're completely correct. You premise that we'd be helping people by feeding them, however, is completely flawed. That money would buy a lot of food, but when I thought of how much that million was, I thought it would buy a lot of tools and education and basic agricultural reform.

I won't dontate money to "needy" charities unless I know the money goes towards things which help build a less needy future, not non-sustainable, stopgap measures. For exmple, I'd give to "Feed the African Children", or whatever, only if I knew the money was going towards improving farming methods, animal husbandry skills, education, water supply improvement, birth control and reproductive education, etc. rather than just plain food (which is usually just stolen and sold anyway). I all I continue to give is just food, when will I be able to stop? When will the people I feed get to the point where they no longer need my help and can provide for themselves?

Yeah, there are grey areas here (it's a shame the US destroys perfectly good crops to keep prices balanced, for example), but by and large terminally hungry people could use the ability to make food as opposed to merely food. Has Sally Struthers helped anyone get out of poverty and become self-sustaining? Have those "adopt a kid" programs gotten to the point where they've run out of kids? I'm not being cynical or contrary; I just can't help but think of it as the orgnic system it is. Energy is constantly flowing into it, but energy demand only increases as more flows in (probably due to unsustainable growth). Rather than building any sort of foundation, all the food does is create a positive feedback loop of needing more food. The hungriest nations are not going to get less hungry if we continue to feed them. They need to know how to help themselves. Looked at one way, one caould say that we're almost doing them a disservice by helping them. Metaphorically speaking, we're putting phosphates in the pond and complaining that all the algae don't have enough to eat. We're not part of the solution.

I know you need to have the basics first, and that there will always be the itinerant and/or temporarily hungry, but the handout mentality really needs to shift towards helping people help themselves or the needy will be forever needful. IM(H)O.

-B

Re:They need fishing poles instead of fish

[Ruzty]

First, Save the Children takes the money donated and helps feed the child and his or her family. THis frees the child from having to work to help support the family and allows them to attend a Feed the Children (or other group) sponsored school. An educated and nourished child helps break the cycle.

Second, Save the Children and other similar charities pool a portion of the donations to families in the same community to go toward improvements. They often go toward digging wells or irrigation ditches. They build communal argicultural and sanitation improvements that help break the cycle of poverty and disease.

Please check your facts before generalizing about charitable funding.

-Rusty

Re:Egg Troll has $800,000

[Spruce Moose]

befriend me if you support free speach [slashdot.org]

Befriend me if you can spell!