I wore contact lenses for 9 years, up until this past spring. I always hated the contacts, since they were a nuisance to put in, take out, take care of, etc. I hated glasses even more, though, since they didn't do as much for me (especially annoying was the lack of peripheral vision when wearing glasses).
Last winter, I got an infection in my eye from the contacts, and couldn't wear them for a few weeks. The eye doctor told me that that's not uncommon in contact wearers, even if you've gone for ten years with no problems. He said it can happen again any time, or maybe never again.
After that, I started seriously considering getting laser surgery. I'd thought about it a couple of years ago, but decided that the failure rate (about 3-4% at the time) was too high for me to risk. I did some research into the procedure, and into various doctors. I found an excellent doctor (one of the pioneers of the surgery, considered one of the best at it in the country, yada yada yada), and spoke to him about my concerns. He told me about the recent developments (flying-spot, for example) which addressed many of my concerns, discussed his history with other patients, and his methods. He really set my mind at ease.
To make a long story not-quite-as-long, I decided to get the surgery done. I had the LASIK procedure in mid-April. It was quick and painless, and worked perfectly. My vision went from 20/200 or so to 20/15 in both eyes. There were no complications, my night vision is fine, my eyes are fine, I can sit in front of a computer for hours every day without problems.
I've been recommending this surgery to people who ask me about it, and recommending this particular doctor, who did an excellent job, and takes good care of his patients.
The one thing to consider is that the long-term effects aren't really known. The surgery hasn't been around for very long, so nobody really knows for sure what might happen 20 or 30 years down the road.
It's the fact that hardware I *bought* and the DVD I *bought* artificially limits my ability to use the media as designed. And against my will.
Well, then, perhaps you shouldn't have bought it. This limitation was part of the exchange of money for goods that you participated in.
Once again, in case anyone's forgotten, you do not have a *right* to any content. The studios create this content, and they own this content, and they may distribute this content however they see fit. In this case, they have chosen to distribute the content with the limitation that you have to watch an ad first.
Don't like it? Don't buy it! If people didn't throw piles of money at them for doing this, maybe they wouldn't do it any more...
Cliff Johnson recently made all three of his classic Mac puzzle games (Fool's Errand, Puzzle Gallery: At the Carnival, and 3 in Three) available for free on his web site. I highly recommend these games, especially Fool's Errand.
All three work in the Classic environment on OS X. At the Carnival and 3 in Three only work in 256 color mode, Fool's Errand will work with any color settings.
I can understand the "too little" part of the "too-little-too-late" comment, but why too late? Don't we want to encourage companies to open up their source code, even if they're not the first to do it? It's quite clear that Real has a significant product, and if they're willing to open up even part of it, especially after all this time, that's better than not at all, right?
Perhaps this should've been from the "too-little-better-late-than-never" department instead?
Suppose, for just a moment, that there were a store that legally sold MP3s. You could take your MP3 player there, and hook it up to a 'puter, load the songs onto your player, pay for them, and leave.
Now suppose that you take your player, load up the songs, and then run out of the store without paying. Is that theft? It sounds an awful lot like shoplifting to me, but you haven't denied the store or the copyright holder use of the item, in that they can still sell it to other people.
If you agree that this is theft, then how does copying it from someone online differ from copying it from the store? If you think that this is not theft (i.e. not shoplifting), why not?
I am under no obligation to fulfill their monetary wishes.
Actually, by using their product, you are under such an obligation. Their product is created and provided with the explicit condition that you fulfill their monetary wishes. If you use their product, you are tacitly agreeing to that condition.
My view is that if they want me to enter my personal data, they should play by my rules.
That's a pretty ridiculous view. What is going on here is that there is a site (nytimes.com, for example), which is providing content to you. You clearly find it worth reading the content, because you're willing to spend the time to read it. In return for this content, rather than money, they ask for some personal data.
So should you play by their rules, or should they play by yours? Under their rules, they get your personal data, which is valuable to them, with your consent, and you get their content, which is valuable to you, with their consent. Under your rules, they get phony data, which is entirely worthless to them, and you get their content, which is valuable to you, and in violation of their terms of service (and thus is without their consent).
Which of these seems like a reasonable exchange, and which of these seems like a self-centered, "I deserve everything for free, and it's OK to violate anyone's ToS to get what I want" way of looking at things?
If you don't want to give them your personal information, you don't have to. Just don't claim that you are entitled to read their content if you don't. You have no right to read nytimes.com. That is a privelege they grant exclusively to those users who give them their personal information.
At first, upon hearing about these changes, I thought they sounded like a good idea. After all, shouldn't the people who are supposed to be protecting us be allowed to look in public places for information?
After reading these articles, I'm not at all certain. I know that the abuses under Hoover were pretty bad at times, and while I'd like to think that times are different now, I don't really have any reason to, especially not under Bush/Ashcroft. And I definitely wasn't inspired to confidence by this quote from the article:
But Mary Jo White, who supervised several major terrorism prosecutions as United States attorney in Manhattan, sees things differently.
Even as a reaction to abuses in the 60's and 70's, Ms. White said, the old Justice Department guidelines were misguided.
"I wouldn't have favored them in the old days because they are a barrier to important, legitimate investigative measures," she said. "We're now at war. The public safety concern has to come first. Would that we wouldn't have to pay this price for our own safety and national security. But we do."
Some of us would rather not trade our rights and our freedom for (the illusion of) safety. That price is too high.
This is not a "pro-open source rant." This is a comment about the complete lack of useful discussion this slashdot posting has considering slashdot's audience.
Considering Slashdot's audience? Because we all know that all Slashdot readers think exactly alike. That's why nobody ever discusses the pros and cons of open vs. closed source software here. Or the moral and legal issues with downloading music, movies, or software.
In fact, I'm not sure why there's a discussion board at all. We all just post the exact same things. Why do you think every post after the first is modded (-1, Redundant)?
C'mon, hellfire. We all know that Slashdot has a very broad audience, including people who use (and even some who make and promote!) closed-source software. Piracy is a big issue for many people here. Not everyone wants to switch to open source, and they have the right to keep their products closed.
that Bnetd posted screenshots of Blizzard games to their website (this should be deemed fair use by the courts).
I agree that most of the lawsuit points detailed above are dubious at best, but I think that Blizzard has a legitimate case on this one. Fair use does not include using copyrighted materials to promote a competing product or service. Since Bnetd is a competing service (the fact that they don't make any money on it is irrelevant, since they still would draw users away from Blizzard's BATTLE.NET), Blizzard does have a legal leg to stand on on this point.
That said, I don't think they _should_ be suing. As has been pointed out by many users, if they could make a pleasant alliance with Bnetd instead of attacking them, they have much to gain. Unfortunately, they didn't ask my opinion, so I'll have to voice it by not buying their products.
I guess we'll find out in just a few minutes exactly *how* much more performance 2.0 has over 1.3.
0.7.
Re:What about my old perl code?
on
Exegesis 4 Out
·
· Score: 1
Yes. This is the p52p6 program that Damian references briefly in the Exegesis. It will know how to convert all the perl5 constructs into the equivalent perl6 code.
Think about that... If only 1% of american businesses decided to use spam, and they only sent one spam email a year to 1% of the population, that's still thousands of messages A week per person!
Come again? This doesn't make any sense at all. If there were 1,000 messages per week per person, then that's 52,000 messages per year per person. Since each spamming company only sends one email per year to 1% of the population, then to achieve this level of coverage, you need to have 100 times that many companies sending spam. So now we have 5,200,000 companies per person sending spam. And that's only the spammers! Only 1% of companies are spammers, which means that there are a whopping 520,000,000 U.S. companies per person!
Now, I don't know about you, but I don't even have one company, much less 520 million of them, so I think that your math is a little bit off here...
I swear, this is one of the most addictive console games I've ever played. The main game is fun, but gets tired after a little while. When it does, you've got six other games packed in there to fool around with for a while. I've already racked up many hours playing this game, and I expect to while away many more on it. (And it's completely appropriate for little kids, too!)
If you liked the first Rogue Squadron game, buy this one. It's more of the same. While I do wish that they'd done something a little more innovative for the sequel, it's still quite enjoyable.
Of course, of the three games I've got so far, the best by far is Super Monkey Ball. Wow! Whatta game!
From the article: New York is planning to sign the agreement with some added restrictions on Microsoft, a source close to the deliberations said Monday.
Oh good. After two months, I at last have legitimate reasons to be embarrassed to be a New Yorker again.
Here's the real problem, this tournament will favor valks because they are so easy to ascend. They really should have some major prizes for those of us who like a challenge, like ascending tourists.
You mean like offering prizes for the top three scores in each class?
The only major question i have is how do they make sure that they are all using the same version with the same options?
Presumably because we're all playing on the servers that they control, so they know what version they have installed...
Slashdot Mirror
One more experience to add to your tally...
I wore contact lenses for 9 years, up until this past spring. I always hated the contacts, since they were a nuisance to put in, take out, take care of, etc. I hated glasses even more, though, since they didn't do as much for me (especially annoying was the lack of peripheral vision when wearing glasses).
Last winter, I got an infection in my eye from the contacts, and couldn't wear them for a few weeks. The eye doctor told me that that's not uncommon in contact wearers, even if you've gone for ten years with no problems. He said it can happen again any time, or maybe never again.
After that, I started seriously considering getting laser surgery. I'd thought about it a couple of years ago, but decided that the failure rate (about 3-4% at the time) was too high for me to risk. I did some research into the procedure, and into various doctors. I found an excellent doctor (one of the pioneers of the surgery, considered one of the best at it in the country, yada yada yada), and spoke to him about my concerns. He told me about the recent developments (flying-spot, for example) which addressed many of my concerns, discussed his history with other patients, and his methods. He really set my mind at ease.
To make a long story not-quite-as-long, I decided to get the surgery done. I had the LASIK procedure in mid-April. It was quick and painless, and worked perfectly. My vision went from 20/200 or so to 20/15 in both eyes. There were no complications, my night vision is fine, my eyes are fine, I can sit in front of a computer for hours every day without problems.
I've been recommending this surgery to people who ask me about it, and recommending this particular doctor, who did an excellent job, and takes good care of his patients.
The one thing to consider is that the long-term effects aren't really known. The surgery hasn't been around for very long, so nobody really knows for sure what might happen 20 or 30 years down the road.
I believe the preferred term is "switching".
Now we can rescue the Lonely Astronaut!
Well, then, perhaps you shouldn't have bought it. This limitation was part of the exchange of money for goods that you participated in.
Once again, in case anyone's forgotten, you do not have a *right* to any content. The studios create this content, and they own this content, and they may distribute this content however they see fit. In this case, they have chosen to distribute the content with the limitation that you have to watch an ad first.
Don't like it? Don't buy it! If people didn't throw piles of money at them for doing this, maybe they wouldn't do it any more...
All three work in the Classic environment on OS X. At the Carnival and 3 in Three only work in 256 color mode, Fool's Errand will work with any color settings.
Yes, because good music and free wireless connectivity go hand in hand, right?
??!?!?!
Hmm...
And, of course, there's no chance that he posts them because the NYT writes high-quality articles on interesting topics, right?
I can understand the "too little" part of the "too-little-too-late" comment, but why too late? Don't we want to encourage companies to open up their source code, even if they're not the first to do it? It's quite clear that Real has a significant product, and if they're willing to open up even part of it, especially after all this time, that's better than not at all, right?
Perhaps this should've been from the "too-little-better-late-than-never" department instead?
Suppose, for just a moment, that there were a store that legally sold MP3s. You could take your MP3 player there, and hook it up to a 'puter, load the songs onto your player, pay for them, and leave.
Now suppose that you take your player, load up the songs, and then run out of the store without paying. Is that theft? It sounds an awful lot like shoplifting to me, but you haven't denied the store or the copyright holder use of the item, in that they can still sell it to other people.
If you agree that this is theft, then how does copying it from someone online differ from copying it from the store? If you think that this is not theft (i.e. not shoplifting), why not?
Actually, by using their product, you are under such an obligation. Their product is created and provided with the explicit condition that you fulfill their monetary wishes. If you use their product, you are tacitly agreeing to that condition.
That's a pretty ridiculous view. What is going on here is that there is a site (nytimes.com, for example), which is providing content to you. You clearly find it worth reading the content, because you're willing to spend the time to read it. In return for this content, rather than money, they ask for some personal data.
So should you play by their rules, or should they play by yours? Under their rules, they get your personal data, which is valuable to them, with your consent, and you get their content, which is valuable to you, with their consent. Under your rules, they get phony data, which is entirely worthless to them, and you get their content, which is valuable to you, and in violation of their terms of service (and thus is without their consent).
Which of these seems like a reasonable exchange, and which of these seems like a self-centered, "I deserve everything for free, and it's OK to violate anyone's ToS to get what I want" way of looking at things?
If you don't want to give them your personal information, you don't have to. Just don't claim that you are entitled to read their content if you don't. You have no right to read nytimes.com. That is a privelege they grant exclusively to those users who give them their personal information.
-Joe
No, he means "bail". They've got way too much hay in Iowa, so they're trying to throw some of it overboard into Minnesota.
After reading these articles, I'm not at all certain. I know that the abuses under Hoover were pretty bad at times, and while I'd like to think that times are different now, I don't really have any reason to, especially not under Bush/Ashcroft. And I definitely wasn't inspired to confidence by this quote from the article:
But Mary Jo White, who supervised several major terrorism prosecutions as United States attorney in Manhattan, sees things differently.
Even as a reaction to abuses in the 60's and 70's, Ms. White said, the old Justice Department guidelines were misguided.
"I wouldn't have favored them in the old days because they are a barrier to important, legitimate investigative measures," she said. "We're now at war. The public safety concern has to come first. Would that we wouldn't have to pay this price for our own safety and national security. But we do."
Some of us would rather not trade our rights and our freedom for (the illusion of) safety. That price is too high.
-Joe
Considering Slashdot's audience? Because we all know that all Slashdot readers think exactly alike. That's why nobody ever discusses the pros and cons of open vs. closed source software here. Or the moral and legal issues with downloading music, movies, or software.
In fact, I'm not sure why there's a discussion board at all. We all just post the exact same things. Why do you think every post after the first is modded (-1, Redundant)?
C'mon, hellfire. We all know that Slashdot has a very broad audience, including people who use (and even some who make and promote!) closed-source software. Piracy is a big issue for many people here. Not everyone wants to switch to open source, and they have the right to keep their products closed.
I agree that most of the lawsuit points detailed above are dubious at best, but I think that Blizzard has a legitimate case on this one. Fair use does not include using copyrighted materials to promote a competing product or service. Since Bnetd is a competing service (the fact that they don't make any money on it is irrelevant, since they still would draw users away from Blizzard's BATTLE.NET), Blizzard does have a legal leg to stand on on this point.
That said, I don't think they _should_ be suing. As has been pointed out by many users, if they could make a pleasant alliance with Bnetd instead of attacking them, they have much to gain. Unfortunately, they didn't ask my opinion, so I'll have to voice it by not buying their products.
-Joe
0.7.
Yes. This is the p52p6 program that Damian references briefly in the Exegesis. It will know how to convert all the perl5 constructs into the equivalent perl6 code.
Come again? This doesn't make any sense at all. If there were 1,000 messages per week per person, then that's 52,000 messages per year per person. Since each spamming company only sends one email per year to 1% of the population, then to achieve this level of coverage, you need to have 100 times that many companies sending spam. So now we have 5,200,000 companies per person sending spam. And that's only the spammers! Only 1% of companies are spammers, which means that there are a whopping 520,000,000 U.S. companies per person!
Now, I don't know about you, but I don't even have one company, much less 520 million of them, so I think that your math is a little bit off here...
-Joe
-Joe
Yes. I just finished watching Gone in 15 Seconds. (It wasn't any better at that speed, alas.)
-Joe
I have just three words:
Super. Monkey. Ball.
I swear, this is one of the most addictive console games I've ever played. The main game is fun, but gets tired after a little while. When it does, you've got six other games packed in there to fool around with for a while. I've already racked up many hours playing this game, and I expect to while away many more on it. (And it's completely appropriate for little kids, too!)
If you liked the first Rogue Squadron game, buy this one. It's more of the same. While I do wish that they'd done something a little more innovative for the sequel, it's still quite enjoyable.
Of course, of the three games I've got so far, the best by far is Super Monkey Ball. Wow! Whatta game!
From the article:
New York is planning to sign the agreement with some added restrictions on Microsoft, a source close to the deliberations said Monday.
Oh good. After two months, I at last have legitimate reasons to be embarrassed to be a New Yorker again.
You mean like offering prizes for the top three scores in each class?
The only major question i have is how do they make sure that they are all using the same version with the same options?
Presumably because we're all playing on the servers that they control, so they know what version they have installed...