that's an lot of awfully nasty things to say about these doctors, without necessarily any provocation! which brings me to a small observation that i have, having worked in the medical profession for a few years:
patients are grumpy, they're upset, they don't like what you tell them, and nothing will do. why is this? because they're ill. ill people are not happy people.
the fact that general practitioners in particular survive so many years of this never ceases to amaze me. the fact that they can maintain their sympathy, and try to do their best for each patient, is frankly quite stunning, in the face of the abuse and negativity they see directed towards them often daily. and you sir, have displayed quite nicely some of it.
any profession has the right to try and offer a high end service that will be charged for appropriately. that's what these doctors are obviously attempting to do. at the other end of the spectrum their will be (or should be, depending on how fucked your country is) affordable no-bells-and-whistles medical care for those that need it.
let them offer a high end service. there are people out there with the money who want to pay for it.
don't know if anyone's mentioned it yet. but pretty much all drinking games are non-zero sum. everytime you 'punish' someone with making them drink, you're aiding them in their goal of getting drunk.
this isn't the conspiracy you're looking for, move along.
corel are in the motions of doing all they can to become profitable as soon as possible. the linux division, as much as they might have loved it, wasn't making money, and wasn't positioned well to become a leader in the distributions business for a while yet.
it looks to me a purely business move - shed the money losers, focus on the areas that are already profitable and with substantial customer bases (draw and wordperfect).
and i seriously doubt there's any underhand dealings with microsoft involved. linux isn't posing any threat to windows in the desktop world yet, and it doesn't look like it will be for a while. microsoft's fear of linux is in servers and embedded, as far as i can see. which are two areas that corel have nothing to do with.
i run redhat on some machines, debian on the ones i like, and something obscure and small on my router, and i don't have any problems.
the only real problem is binary incompatibility, which seems to be creeping in at the moment, but may be just a temporary thing.
although of course, binary incompatibility only creates problems for people shipping binaries and no source. and that's a very small portion of the software available for linux.
"My personal freedom is an *entirely* separate issue from my personal privacy. I cannot see for a moment how you can say that (if..) my freedom is not restricted, then I should be unconcerned about the loss of my personal privacy.
A non sequitur"
a fair point, and one that i'd hoped someone would make.
"What happens when "my" government re-defines what's legal and what's illegal?
How can I be safe from any future, arbitrary changes in the laws, over which I have *no* control, and probably no knowledge, until the Secret Police are knocking at my door?"
at what stage did we lose our right to vote, our right to protest, and our right to referendums? we have as substantial control over decisions of laws as is possible in the current political system. if you feel that you don't have the power to influence law changes, then you should be doing something about it.
"A utterly naive attitude.
How *completely* aware are you, of all laws and statutes that are in effect where you live?"
i am aware enough of the laws to know when i am breaking one, and when i am not. i am also aware of which ones i disagree with, and am actively working towards having them corrected. the legal system is a system that is supposed to work for us. if you feel that it isn't working, then rather than flustering about in paranoid fits, you should be working to change it.
i'm going to play devil's advocate here and go completely against the grain. these aren't necessarily my views, just speculations. flame at will.
personal websites are moving more and more away from being private affairs, and turning into exhibitionist extravaganzas. web cams, journals, photos of people and their friends, details about their love lives, etc etc. people seem to be quite willingly giving up their privacy on the net, more and more.
now certainly these are people that are doing it by choice, and knowingly, whilst having the government spy on you is certainly far more covert and lacking in choice, which is a key difference.
but what i guess i'm getting at, is if your personal freedom isn't being restricted any more, then does loss of personal privacy with regards to the government really matter? if you're not doing anything illegal, then does it really matter if the government knows about all your legal activities?
perhaps one senario is this: the government knows more and more about what individuals are doing, which allows them to quickly focus on the dangerous ones, whilst allowing everyone else get on with their lives. this could possibly lead to people actually being granted greater freedoms, due to the government's ability to direct their attention more precisely on where the trouble lies and do so swiftly.
as i said, this is just wild speculation, and an invitation for debate. so no need to get your knickers in a twist.
wake up to reality boy, you just provided an emotive and factless post.
most recreational drugs, taken in sensible doses are no more dangerous than prescription medicines. the danger comes in being unaware of what you've purchased, what it's beeen cut with, or what is an appropriate dosage.
people will always take drugs, and the trend is increasing, not decreasing. safety lies in education and regulation.
a friend of mine died in a car accident a year ago. i still drive to the beach every weekend.
not to belittle your friend's death, but everything in life has its risks. and some of the things we do most often are some of the riskiest, but that doesn't mean we have to stop doing them.
if rob wants to call someone an idiot, he can damn well do that. since when did it become kosher to censor the editors, but not to censor the posts? it's an open forum, which goes for the users goes for the creators too.
i'll agree that bill gates earnt his place on that list, but i'll never agree that windows has a good ui..
i installed an acorn archimedes emulator the other day.. that early 90's pre-286 gui windowed interface was *miles* ahead of windows in useability and consistency/continuity.. and that's just one example, there's many more..
the windows ui is an embarrasment to the computing community, and a step down from many that have come before..
bill gate's progressions, although very prominent, have definately not been in avenues of user interface..
completely off topic, but it reminds me of the reason why i quit doing tech support..
i'd set up a small network and medical system for a client.. left them to it to twiddle their way through.. next day i've got an irate receptionist on the phone saying i've security locked her out from entering any payments.. i spend a good while on the phone walking her through the security interface.. everything's normal, i'm most perplexed.. eventually i give in and head off for the two hour drive to the site.. i get there, walk in, see her trying to enter the data, i press the numlock key, i walk out..
this doesn't really add much to what you say, but it's my experience as someone who works with graphics software for web, so..
their recent release of photopaint for linux is actually quite a fine piece of work. i've spent a lot of time with photoshop and the gimp, both of which i'm very fond of. but photopaint under linux actually is a VERY fine piece of work. granted it wont bring them revenue, as it's a free download. but it does show that they're on the path to bringing out some very quality products for linux.
photopaint's interface is very intuitive (more so than either gimp or photoshop, and that's saying something seeing as i'm at home in both). which shows that they know how to make an end user product, and make it user friendly. i definately respect the interface designers at corel, and thus hope that they do survive.
the new zealand government is blocking a cigar site from being viewed here as of yesterday or so. anti-tabacco advertising laws you see, and pictures of cigars are of course adverts.
i'd say, as they figure out how, all governments are going to take a stand over particular things they don't want their public to see. the beauty of it all though, is that it's utterly futile, what with the proxy show-me-what-i'm-not-spose-to-see toys. and i'm sure technology will always be ahead of governments, in ensuring free access to information.
ok, so everyone's saying "but there's MAME, why this?", and i half agree. but they are well within their rights doing it this way, and it is infact a good thing!
firstly, it's not the original game rewritten for shockwave, it's a shockwave written "emulator" playing the original rom image (or perhaps slightly adapted rom image), so you are getting close to the real thing, just like MAME.
secondly, this puts them back in control of the distribution of their own games, which IS THEIR RIGHT. and leads them to be able to perhaps sell them in this manner in the future, if demand is high enough, which IS THEIR RIGHT.
and thirdly, shockwave isn't evil because it doesn't run fully on linux. macromedia are perhaps evil because their support isn't 100%, but that's life on the fringe (and we are still fringe, kids).
this is not the sig you're looking for, move along..
from personal experience, and from the experiences of friends and family, I'd conclude that alcoholics often have very valid reasons for being so. perhaps the loss of a family member or friend, a broken marriage or relationship, a career failure, mental illness of one kind or another.
yes there are people who are alcoholics without rational reasons, but they still have reasons.
this is great:) I can see it now.. you step into a crowded subway, your pager goes off.. looking round, you put out the call "oh, ah.. anyone round here into pantie fetishes?"
well, don't ever come to New Zealand. you'd hate it here.. we're completely anti-nuclear. everything's green and fresh, lots of forest left that's not getting cut down, lots of native animals that aren't extinct yet, and the green party is part of the ruling coalition.
please do stay in your own stinky, sick, stripped naked, land.
granted they may have implemented something useful. but I think the thing that people are worked up about is that this is out there in the wild, it breaks previous implementations, and it's not documented. of course, correct me if I'm wrong.
I actually wanted to read a review of this movie, because I'm a movie geek and I'm interested in other movie geek's opinions on this one. I also didn't read, and didn't want to read about the Anti-Spam law passed in Colorado. Hell I don't even know where Colorado is! Not all geeks live in your part of the world, and not all of us care about your political shufflings. All geeks are able to see movies (hopefully?), and hell, not all articles need to be heavy 'your future depends on it' stuff..
So settle down, take your pills, perhaps get some fresh air, and leave Kats alone.
It appears that some people just can not be helped.
I have been reading Slashdot since day one, and I honestly feel that the content of discussions has been improving over time, not degrading. We have moderation that was invented to get around the very things that you are moaning about. Now I'd put money on you being one of the folks that says "I wont use moderation because it's not free speech" or some such drivel.
With every article that I read the comments of, I spend perhaps 5 minutes reading the comments that have floated to the top due to moderation, and I get absolute quality almost all the time. The system works, use it or stop moaning about problems already solved.
Actually I believe the article states Corel is not going for damages, but is hoping for an injuction. Or something. Legal terms generally shoot way over my head, but it sounds like they're just pressing for this deal to be redone under a more level and honest process, rather than to get back the money they lost on the deal.
Still, I could be reading it all wrong. So sue me:)
ok so I probably over evangelise these keyboards, but I just love them:) the Kinesis Contour (kinesis-ergo.com). I've done a quick review of mine at base.yi.org which is maybe worth a read.
Anyway, they're superb for people with wrist injuries. Infact most of the manual is dedicated to how to reduce wrist injuries, and even has a section at the back with an intro written by Herman Miller Inc (those really comfy chairs that Rob and co have from hmstore.com) that goes indepth into workspace ergonomics and risk reduction etc.
Slashdot Mirror
that's an lot of awfully nasty things to say about these doctors, without necessarily any provocation! which brings me to a small observation that i have, having worked in the medical profession for a few years:
patients are grumpy, they're upset, they don't like what you tell them, and nothing will do. why is this? because they're ill. ill people are not happy people.
the fact that general practitioners in particular survive so many years of this never ceases to amaze me. the fact that they can maintain their sympathy, and try to do their best for each patient, is frankly quite stunning, in the face of the abuse and negativity they see directed towards them often daily. and you sir, have displayed quite nicely some of it.
any profession has the right to try and offer a high end service that will be charged for appropriately. that's what these doctors are obviously attempting to do. at the other end of the spectrum their will be (or should be, depending on how fucked your country is) affordable no-bells-and-whistles medical care for those that need it.
let them offer a high end service. there are people out there with the money who want to pay for it.
matt
don't know if anyone's mentioned it yet. but pretty much all drinking games are non-zero sum. everytime you 'punish' someone with making them drink, you're aiding them in their goal of getting drunk.
matt
Somebody tell me there's no conspiracy
this isn't the conspiracy you're looking for, move along.
corel are in the motions of doing all they can to become profitable as soon as possible. the linux division, as much as they might have loved it, wasn't making money, and wasn't positioned well to become a leader in the distributions business for a while yet.
it looks to me a purely business move - shed the money losers, focus on the areas that are already profitable and with substantial customer bases (draw and wordperfect).
and i seriously doubt there's any underhand dealings with microsoft involved. linux isn't posing any threat to windows in the desktop world yet, and it doesn't look like it will be for a while. microsoft's fear of linux is in servers and embedded, as far as i can see. which are two areas that corel have nothing to do with.
matt
i believe (although i may be wrong), that dvd region restrictions are already illegal in new zealand. or rather, they break an already in place law.
so any player you buy in nz is multi-region. certainly all the players i've bought have been unrestricted.
can anyone confirm this one for me? and are there other countries where this is already the case?
matt
yes maybe you're right.
but are we suffering? i'm certainly not.
i run redhat on some machines, debian on the ones i like, and something obscure and small on my router, and i don't have any problems.
the only real problem is binary incompatibility, which seems to be creeping in at the moment, but may be just a temporary thing.
although of course, binary incompatibility only creates problems for people shipping binaries and no source. and that's a very small portion of the software available for linux.
matt
"My personal freedom is an *entirely* separate issue from my personal privacy. I cannot see for a moment how you can say that (if..) my freedom is not restricted, then I should be unconcerned about the loss of my personal privacy.
A non sequitur"
a fair point, and one that i'd hoped someone would make.
"What happens when "my" government re-defines what's legal and what's illegal?
How can I be safe from any future, arbitrary changes in the laws, over which I have *no* control, and probably no knowledge, until the Secret Police are knocking at my door?"
at what stage did we lose our right to vote, our right to protest, and our right to referendums? we have as substantial control over decisions of laws as is possible in the current political system. if you feel that you don't have the power to influence law changes, then you should be doing something about it.
"A utterly naive attitude.
How *completely* aware are you, of all laws and statutes that are in effect where you live?"
i am aware enough of the laws to know when i am breaking one, and when i am not. i am also aware of which ones i disagree with, and am actively working towards having them corrected. the legal system is a system that is supposed to work for us. if you feel that it isn't working, then rather than flustering about in paranoid fits, you should be working to change it.
you, my friend, need to stop smoking so much of the good green grass that we grow so well here. your paranoia is overflowing.
i was attempting to discuss an idealists senario, not your paranoid fantasy.
i'm going to play devil's advocate here and go completely against the grain. these aren't necessarily my views, just speculations. flame at will.
personal websites are moving more and more away from being private affairs, and turning into exhibitionist extravaganzas. web cams, journals, photos of people and their friends, details about their love lives, etc etc. people seem to be quite willingly giving up their privacy on the net, more and more.
now certainly these are people that are doing it by choice, and knowingly, whilst having the government spy on you is certainly far more covert and lacking in choice, which is a key difference.
but what i guess i'm getting at, is if your personal freedom isn't being restricted any more, then does loss of personal privacy with regards to the government really matter? if you're not doing anything illegal, then does it really matter if the government knows about all your legal activities?
perhaps one senario is this: the government knows more and more about what individuals are doing, which allows them to quickly focus on the dangerous ones, whilst allowing everyone else get on with their lives. this could possibly lead to people actually being granted greater freedoms, due to the government's ability to direct their attention more precisely on where the trouble lies and do so swiftly.
as i said, this is just wild speculation, and an invitation for debate. so no need to get your knickers in a twist.
wake up to reality boy, you just provided an emotive and factless post.
most recreational drugs, taken in sensible doses are no more dangerous than prescription medicines. the danger comes in being unaware of what you've purchased, what it's beeen cut with, or what is an appropriate dosage.
people will always take drugs, and the trend is increasing, not decreasing. safety lies in education and regulation.
a friend of mine died in a car accident a year ago. i still drive to the beach every weekend.
not to belittle your friend's death, but everything in life has its risks. and some of the things we do most often are some of the riskiest, but that doesn't mean we have to stop doing them.
oh stop whining ya big baby.
it's just a website, for god's sake.
if rob wants to call someone an idiot, he can damn well do that. since when did it become kosher to censor the editors, but not to censor the posts? it's an open forum, which goes for the users goes for the creators too.
i'll agree that bill gates earnt his place on that list, but i'll never agree that windows has a good ui..
i installed an acorn archimedes emulator the other day.. that early 90's pre-286 gui windowed interface was *miles* ahead of windows in useability and consistency/continuity.. and that's just one example, there's many more..
the windows ui is an embarrasment to the computing community, and a step down from many that have come before..
bill gate's progressions, although very prominent, have definately not been in avenues of user interface..
completely off topic, but it reminds me of the reason why i quit doing tech support..
i'd set up a small network and medical system for a client.. left them to it to twiddle their way through.. next day i've got an irate receptionist on the phone saying i've security locked her out from entering any payments.. i spend a good while on the phone walking her through the security interface.. everything's normal, i'm most perplexed.. eventually i give in and head off for the two hour drive to the site.. i get there, walk in, see her trying to enter the data, i press the numlock key, i walk out..
this doesn't really add much to what you say, but it's my experience as someone who works with graphics software for web, so..
their recent release of photopaint for linux is actually quite a fine piece of work. i've spent a lot of time with photoshop and the gimp, both of which i'm very fond of. but photopaint under linux actually is a VERY fine piece of work. granted it wont bring them revenue, as it's a free download. but it does show that they're on the path to bringing out some very quality products for linux.
photopaint's interface is very intuitive (more so than either gimp or photoshop, and that's saying something seeing as i'm at home in both). which shows that they know how to make an end user product, and make it user friendly. i definately respect the interface designers at corel, and thus hope that they do survive.
elbobo
the new zealand government is blocking a cigar site from being viewed here as of yesterday or so. anti-tabacco advertising laws you see, and pictures of cigars are of course adverts.
i'd say, as they figure out how, all governments are going to take a stand over particular things they don't want their public to see. the beauty of it all though, is that it's utterly futile, what with the proxy show-me-what-i'm-not-spose-to-see toys. and i'm sure technology will always be ahead of governments, in ensuring free access to information.
el bobo
ok, so everyone's saying "but there's MAME, why this?", and i half agree. but they are well within their rights doing it this way, and it is infact a good thing!
firstly, it's not the original game rewritten for shockwave, it's a shockwave written "emulator" playing the original rom image (or perhaps slightly adapted rom image), so you are getting close to the real thing, just like MAME.
secondly, this puts them back in control of the distribution of their own games, which IS THEIR RIGHT. and leads them to be able to perhaps sell them in this manner in the future, if demand is high enough, which IS THEIR RIGHT.
and thirdly, shockwave isn't evil because it doesn't run fully on linux. macromedia are perhaps evil because their support isn't 100%, but that's life on the fringe (and we are still fringe, kids).
this is not the sig you're looking for, move along..
what makes you an expert on alcoholism?
from personal experience, and from the experiences of friends and family, I'd conclude that alcoholics often have very valid reasons for being so. perhaps the loss of a family member or friend, a broken marriage or relationship, a career failure, mental illness of one kind or another.
yes there are people who are alcoholics without rational reasons, but they still have reasons.
elbobo
this is great :) .. you step into a crowded subway, your pager goes off .. looking round, you put out the call "oh, ah .. anyone round here into pantie fetishes?"
I can see it now
are you for real?
well, don't ever come to New Zealand. you'd hate it here.. we're completely anti-nuclear. everything's green and fresh, lots of forest left that's not getting cut down, lots of native animals that aren't extinct yet, and the green party is part of the ruling coalition.
please do stay in your own stinky, sick, stripped naked, land.
granted they may have implemented something useful. but I think the thing that people are worked up about is that this is out there in the wild, it breaks previous implementations, and it's not documented. of course, correct me if I'm wrong.
el bobo
I vote you find something better to moan about.
I actually wanted to read a review of this movie, because I'm a movie geek and I'm interested in other movie geek's opinions on this one. I also didn't read, and didn't want to read about the Anti-Spam law passed in Colorado. Hell I don't even know where Colorado is! Not all geeks live in your part of the world, and not all of us care about your political shufflings. All geeks are able to see movies (hopefully?), and hell, not all articles need to be heavy 'your future depends on it' stuff..
So settle down, take your pills, perhaps get some fresh air, and leave Kats alone.
el bobo
It appears that some people just can not be helped.
I have been reading Slashdot since day one, and I honestly feel that the content of discussions has been improving over time, not degrading. We have moderation that was invented to get around the very things that you are moaning about. Now I'd put money on you being one of the folks that says "I wont use moderation because it's not free speech" or some such drivel.
With every article that I read the comments of, I spend perhaps 5 minutes reading the comments that have floated to the top due to moderation, and I get absolute quality almost all the time. The system works, use it or stop moaning about problems already solved.
you sure? I've done it many many times too, and to date DOS fdisk has not been able to handle removing Linux partitions.
el bobo
Actually I believe the article states Corel is not going for damages, but is hoping for an injuction. Or something. Legal terms generally shoot way over my head, but it sounds like they're just pressing for this deal to be redone under a more level and honest process, rather than to get back the money they lost on the deal.
:)
Still, I could be reading it all wrong. So sue me
ok so I probably over evangelise these keyboards, but I just love them :) the Kinesis Contour (kinesis-ergo.com). I've done a quick review of mine at base.yi.org which is maybe worth a read.
Anyway, they're superb for people with wrist injuries. Infact most of the manual is dedicated to how to reduce wrist injuries, and even has a section at the back with an intro written by Herman Miller Inc (those really comfy chairs that Rob and co have from hmstore.com) that goes indepth into workspace ergonomics and risk reduction etc.